IT IS SUNDAY NIGHT, AND THE AMATEUR poets have taken over the stage of the Kala Kala jazz club in Washington, declaiming about God, sex, race, alienation and existential horror. Then Margaret Westley-Williams, age 9, gets up and reads a poem about her cat:
Daysie is my
cat. White and black.
She hates other
cats. Why does she do that?
She can separate a mouse
Just like that.
She'll be out of here
Just like that.
She thinks she's all that.
When she's only
a cat.
Margaret, with her proud father standing nearby, gets the biggest applause of the night. In fact, Margaret has been the pint-size star of poetry night at the club in the artsy Adams-Morgan district ever since the beginning of October, when she took her first bow. "They loved her from the start," says owner Dominick Cardella. "And it's not just her age—she's young, but she's also good. She writes some wonderful poetry for her years."
Margaret, a fourth grader at Shepherd Elementary School, became a public poet with the encouragement of her parents, Donald Williams, 50, a computer analyst and sometime stand-up comic, and Mary Westley, 42, a museum administrative assistant. "The point was to get her to express herself, to be creative," says Williams. But Westley adds: "It's not something we're pushing. It's something we're letting happen."
As for Margaret, art has its rewards. "I just like to read my poems," she says. "And besides, everyone is nice—and Chris the bartender brings me about 20 Shirley Temples."
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