A monthly student-run open mic night event added student poets and spoken word performers to its lineup Thursday.

Amaranth—a student club that publishes a yearly art and creative writing magazine—hosts an open mic coffeehouse every first Wednesday at 7 p.m. in Humanities 112. This month, the club teamed up with the Campus Activities Board—a branch of the Student Government Association that puts on many events around campus—to host a poetry slam at the event.

Eleven AACC students each performed self-written poetry before yielding the stage to The Mayhem Poets, a group of three theater-trained spoken-word artists who perform for various events around the country.

The students performed first, reading their works off of phones, books, and, in one case, notecards dropped and ripped as part of the performance. The topics covered religion, relationships and mental illness, among other things.

Zachary Parreco, a first-year political science student, won the top prize for his poem, “You Don’t Know.”

“[I] mostly wrote the poem for a class assignment, and just decided to do it [at the Poetry Slam] as well,” Parreco said.

Anna Helgeson, a first-year transfer studies student, said she had never been to Amaranth’s open mic nights, but found the poetry slam event on the Nest.

“[Students] should come to the coffee house, because I just found out that it’s amazing,” she said.

After the students, The Mayhem Poets took the stage. Their upbeat style involved the audience throughout the performance.

Brian Murphy, CAB’s marketing chair and a second-year creative writing student, organized the event. Murphy said he discovered The Mayhem Poets at the National Association of Campus Activities and asked them to headline the event because they were “upbeat and engaging.”

Amaranth hosts an open mic night every first Wednesday of the month, from 7-9 p.m. in HUM 112.