25-year-old acclaimed slam poet Carrie Rudzinski was truly inspirational at the Women’s Leadership Symposium at UMass Boston’s Campus Center Ballroom on Wednesday, March 7. She shared her experience as author of a collection of poems, “A History of Silence” and participant in a variety of national and international poetry slams in order to encourage women.

The performance poet’s natural ability to speak in front of crowds and her indisputable passion made her a pleasure to listen to.

Rudzinski compares SLAM poetry to therapy: “I get an emotional connection with the audience.” The audience definitely shared her emotion on Wednesday’s reading. People were snapping, hooting, and clapping during and after every poem.

She commented on how strange and disturbing some of her poems are. “I think it’s important to write about weird stuff,” she said. All of her poems came from her own experiences – some funny, some weird and some painful. To her, writing about such things builds her creativity and helps her talk about things she normally wouldn’t be able to.

When she was 18, she took a class called “Poetry as Performance” at Emerson College and fell in love with the performing. “I didn’t intend for performance poetry to become my profession,” she said. Eventually, she hopes to break into the film industry. For now, it’s “thrilling” traveling around the world and performing.

Rudzinski has been touring in New Zealand, Australia and India, and is next heading to Denver, CO for the Women of the World Poetry Slam. Quite humbly, she said, “I feel very lucky to have shared so many things with people of different cultures and backgrounds.”