The Rent Eats First: Northwestern Pritzker Law’s Eric Sirota Pens Poetry on Housing and Justice

In October, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Director of Tenant Advocacy Clinic and Professor Eric Sirota published The Rent Eats First, a book that analyzes capitalist systems and systemic inequality in verse form.

Growing up in Evanston, the son of two lawyers, Sirota began developing his parallel interests in poetry and law early. He recalls writing a poem about “a friendly monster” while in second grade and was on the debate team in high school. “This is so nerdy, but I would read books of excerpts of Supreme Court decisions in high school for fun,” he says.

He found spoken word poetry shortly before attending law school at the University of Illinois. “The first time I slammed in 2006 I wrote these terrible poems, but I really wanted to perform. I became kind of addicted.” Sirota says the drive came from the same place that made him want to do debate team. “I like speaking and performing and I really like competition. I find it motivating. I play sports a lot. Combining poetry with sports in that sense was a really appealing thing for me.”

He got to know other poets who introduced him to the broader spoken word world. “One thing that’s nice about spoken word is it becomes community-based, because it’s not just people reading things other people wrote in isolation. It’s  public and live in nature, which is, good for community building.” (Watch Sirota perform a spoken word poem about eviction law here.)

As an attorney, Sirota came to fair housing while working for Prairie State Legal Services in the Chicago suburbs from 2009—2011, where “I wound up  being one of the main foreclosure people.” When the foreclosure crisis hit the courts,” he says, “The dam really broke, and I wound up just doing mostly foreclosure cases.”

He liked the work because it combined “super wonky law stuff” with the fundamental justice aspects of human rights. Over the years, he worked in various housing contexts, representing individuals, representing tenant associations, working with grassroots organizations, and working in the Illinois Attorney General’s office. “I’ve gotten to a 360-degree vantage point, I think, on housing law. I really, really love it.”

In the Law School Tenant Advocacy clinic, Sirota teaches and supervises law students who represent individuals who are facing eviction and address systemic issues with tenant associations. “The students have gotten to go into court, and draft motions, and draft discovery, but also go to community meetings and speak to a lot of residents to try to sometimes translate resident community goals into systemic solutions for a development or a neighborhood,” he says.

Something unexpected about a book of poetry that blends personal experience as a lawyer with inequality and capitalism is that much of it is humorous. How do you make housing rights funny? Satire, Sirota says. “It’s the line between tragedy and comedy. Much of the book is about either personal experiences with or clients’ experiences or general reflections on the systems of inequity. They’re very absurd.” One of his poems, for instance, is called “A Real Adult Walks Into My Office Seeking Legal Advice Seeking Legal Advice.” Another: “While Scrolling Through Hulu, Awaiting The Delivery Of My Domino’s Thin Crust, I Consider The Horrors Of The Free Market.”

Many attorneys have published poetry, and Sirota says attorneys who are also spoken word poets are not unheard of, like public defender Brenna Twohy and environmental law expert Ryan Jones. “The Venn diagram between poetry and law has a lot of overlap,” he says.

Sirota is promoting the book, published by Button Poetry, with local events and open mics and will take part in a reading and book talk at the Law School in April even though, as he says, “It’s a little less typical of the type of book that sometimes law professors publish. The Law School is treating it like any other book a law school professor publishes, listing it in their faculty publications, and ordering copies for the library, which is really nice and gracious.”

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