At least Sotce seemed to come prepared. Calloway, who’s infamous for her lack of preparation, was up to her old tricks when she took the stage—vamping for about 10 minutes, refusing to offer what she called some “half-baked shit.” Maybe she was rattled by Woah Vicky and Harry Daniels, who reemerged to get a selfie with Calloway before she began. As she spoke, Calloway channeled Andy Kaufman—claiming, repeatedly, that she “had to go” and that her time would “go by really quick” before spending an uncomfortable and seemingly endless number of minutes hyping up her actual performance: her translation of six poems by first century BCE writer Sulpicia.
“At last, the love I’ve waited for has come,” she read. “A love that would make me more ashamed if I hadn’t hid it from my friends with a veil. And if naked, I had just let the rumors fly. Until now, every poem of mine has been a prayer.”
Caroline Calloway and Woah VickyJustin Wolf
Authentic or not, the translations were nothing special. But Calloway’s performance—her manic and sunny disposition, her inability to read the room, her insistence on over-enunciating the T’s in words like Latin and written—was something to behold. If Calloway’s TikTok page is to be believed, she seems to be having a tough time; she recently claimed to be effectively homeless after a bad breakup, though she’s since said she’s found a sublet. (Don’t worry: She’s posting through it.)
Calloway’s act didn’t play well online—one Redditor left a comment on a video from the event reading, “I love when she embarrasses herself in public”—or in the room, for that matter. Alex Dimitrov—an actual poet and Columbia professor who read a personal, funny, bleak poem about his exile from Dimes Square—hit the nail on the head with his slightly caustic opening remarks: “I think Caroline Calloway is more interested in the performance of being a writer then being a writer,” he said, receiving some “oohs” from the audience. He quickly backtracked: “I’m kidding. I like her. I like camp!”
