The word “poet” no longer brings to mind only stuffy, pretentious writers. Slam poetry, poetry performed in a competition called a “slam,” is an art form sweeping college campuses all over the country. The high-energy performances seem to be the complete opposite of the rigid, structured poems taught in English classes.

As a member of Binghamton University’s Slam Poetry Club and our competitive slam poetry team, I knew that our not-quite-two-year-old club was actually the second slam poetry presence in the University’s history. I was surprised to find out, though, that the founder of the original BU slam team would be one of the first features in the Binghamton Center for Writers 2015 Readers’ Series.

Alumnus, poet and teacher Matthew Siegel, a member of the class of 2006, founded the original Binghamton slam team during his time as an undergraduate student. Professor Thomas Glave introduced Siegel to the slam scene at SUNY Oneonta, and one of their poets urged Siegel to assemble a Binghamton team for a SUNY slam.

“I didn’t have an easy time at first,” Siegel wrote in an email. “I could only find two people to do it, and it was just a ragtag kind of thing.”

But after that first collegiate slam, the Binghamton poets realized they found something special in the slam poetry scene.

“We would have parties where people would be playing music, reciting poetry, rapping, it was all totally electric,” Siegel wrote.

Our current slam team recently attended the Wade-Lewis Poetry Slam Invitational at SUNY New Paltz. We were joined by the hosting team, SUNY Oneonta, Vassar and New Paltz’s Urban Lyrics, a rap and spoken word group. We found the same electric community Siegel describes at Wade-Lewis, supporting each other with snaps during the competition and trading poems afterward.

“For the most part, it’s one of the warmest communities you could imagine,” wrote Dan Roman, a senior majoring in English and a member of the team. “One of the first things that happens when a slam is over is that all the poets immediately go up to one another and start talking about how much they enjoyed each other’s work. That’s not a rule, it’s just something that happens organically.”

Though Siegel’s experience with slam poetry was limited to his college years, he learned some valuable lessons.

“It definitely did teach me a lot about being part of an artistic community, and the kind of behavior that helps build that, as well as the kind that causes it to unravel,” Siegel wrote.

Siegel took professor Maria Gillan’s upper-level poetry workshop during his time at BU, which is typically reserved for graduate students.

“He took my class about eight times,” Gillan wrote in an email. “He was amazing because he was so eager to learn. He loves poetry as much as I do.”

After completing his undergraduate degree, Siegel attended graduate school in Houston. Despite his plans to move to New York, he received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University in San Francisco and couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

“I never had any plans to come out here, but I always knew I’d write forever and that teaching was the only profession I could love, other than full-time writing,” Siegel wrote.

Siegel returned to his roots when he read his work at BU in February at the first night of the Binghamton Center for Writers 2015 Readers’ Series. He read primarily from his new book, “Blood Work,” which won this year’s Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry and was published just a few days ago by University of Wisconsin Press. He told the audience that many of the poems in “Blood Work” were born from his experience living with Crohn’s disease.

“I became ill as a teenager, and though I was writing for a few years already, it wasn’t a huge subject for me,” Siegel wrote.

In college, though, Siegel found that writing about painful experiences was important in gaining the ability to write his own story.

“Language gives us the power to claim our stories and in turn, our lives,” Siegel wrote.

Creative writing students are familiar with the struggle between passion for the craft and consistent reminders that writing isn’t always a reliable career path. Siegel was persistent in pursuing his art despite the potential risks, though. He currently teaches literature and writing at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and his poems have been published in numerous literary journals. Still, he believes passionate artists will make it work regardless of their initial career choices.

“I do believe art will always be important if you’re an artist,” Siegel wrote. “When you love it, art wants to get made.”