Hun­dreds of teenaged poets, flanked by coach­es and advi­sors, have packed into the ornate Grand Ball­room at the School of the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go on July 14. Com­pris­ing 50 teams, with entourages of up to 30 peo­ple, they have come from as far away as the Unit­ed King­dom and Guam.

‘It’s difficult because I feel like a lot of poets are trying to write things for social justice,’ says Kass Levy. ‘But if you don’t have that personal connection to it, then the poem suffers for it.’

The poets, aged 13 to 19, are rep­re­sent­ing their cities in the 12th annu­al Brave New Voic­es Inter­na­tion­al Youth Poet­ry Slam Fes­ti­val. Over the next five days, they will per­form three-and-a-half minute poems on top­ics rang­ing from immi­gra­tion to urban vio­lence to envi­ron­men­tal justice.

There are signs of civic pride – most­ly in team shirts or, in the case of the team from Den­ver, match­ing gold lamé head­bands – but most of the young poets are wear­ing this year’s offi­cial fes­ti­val t‑shirt, the back of which bears a quote from slain Black Pan­ther leader Fred Hamp­ton: ​“Let me just say: Peace to you, if you’re will­ing to fight for it.”

“We want [the poets] to appre­ci­ate the words and actions that have gone before them,” says Youth Speaks Exec­u­tive Direc­tor James Kass, ​“and know that they’re part of a con­tin­u­um of writ­ers and activists and edu­ca­tors, that they’re step­ping into it and this is their time.”

While com­pe­ti­tion and artistry are cen­tral to the event, spo­ken word is also deeply polit­i­cal, and the fes­ti­val is a way to voice the youth per­spec­tive, build com­mu­ni­ty and dia­logue about social jus­tice. ​“It’s a way to con­nect with prob­lems that go on in our inner cities and even in our sub­urbs that are not talked about,” says Mil­ton McK­in­ney III of the Chica­go All-Stars team. ​“They’re brought to a high­er plateau and peo­ple all over can relate to them, and it makes peo­ple get clos­er to what’s going on.”

Cen­tral to the fes­ti­val are social jus­tice-ori­ent­ed events, includ­ing a youth town­hall forum, an envi­ron­men­tal­ly focused slam called Speak Green, and the Life Is Liv­ing fes­ti­val, a com­mu­ni­ty par­ty that pro­motes eco-jus­tice and an end to urban vio­lence. Speak Green and the Life Is Liv­ing project are the brain­chil­dren of poet and per­former Marc Bamuthi Joseph, who seeks to bring minor­i­ty voic­es to the green movement.

“The envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis real­ly par­al­lels a lot of the oth­er things that are hap­pen­ing,” says Michael Cirelli, who coach­es the Urban Word team from New York City. ​“This real­ly broad­ens the sphere of [young people’s] activism, because aside from chal­leng­ing the inequities in their school sys­tem and their com­mu­ni­ties, now they are actu­al­ly see­ing how the envi­ron­ments in these places are also dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly under-served and under-pro­tect­ed in many cases.”

Nolan Eskeets, a poet rep­re­sent­ing the San­ta Fe Indi­an School, per­formed a piece at Speak Green called ​“The Boy Dreams,” about the dam­age ura­ni­um min­ing has inflict­ed upon the Nava­jo Nation. His soft-spo­ken demeanor became stern as he read: ​“He embraces Sister/​she swings from Father’s ven­omous hands before sit­ting to dinner/​her kid­neys will fail.”

Eskeets has been using the poem as a means to net­work with envi­ron­men­tal advo­ca­cy groups. ​“If the right peo­ple are lis­ten­ing, then obvi­ous­ly some­thing will man­i­fest,” he says.

‘ Life Is Living’

On July 18, res­i­dents of Chicago’s Uptown neigh­bor­hood were greet­ed with pound­ing march­ing band drums and impas­sioned chants as slam par­tic­i­pants and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers took part in the Life Is Liv­ing fes­ti­val parade. Marchers car­ried poles with green ​“street signs” bear­ing the name of a Chica­go youth slain this year.

The parade wound up in Claren­don Park, where the fes­ti­val con­tin­ued with break­danc­ing com­pe­ti­tions, sports tour­na­ments and guer­ril­la the­atre. Mean­while, graf­fi­ti artists paint­ed vivid sus­tain­abil­i­ty-focused murals, which Bamuthi Joseph will install in 16 loca­tions around Chica­go to unite the com­mu­ni­ty and pro­vide a tan­gi­ble reminder of the event’s message.

A num­ber of hip-hop artists per­formed, includ­ing Pharoa­he Monch, Chicago’s Rebel Diaz and slam cir­cuit leg­end Saul Williams. ​“Once [the poets] find their voic­es, they are their own heal­ers, they are their own community’s heal­ers,” Williams says. ​“So all we’re doing is try­ing to con­nect them to their own source.”

Young poets’ society

Kevin Cov­al, founder of the annu­al Chica­go youth slam Loud­er Than A Bomb and emcee of the BNV finals says the slam has a democ­ra­tiz­ing effect. ​“For young peo­ple to see what it’s like to be from Guam or from a reser­va­tion in the South­west or a city in the North­east or from Chica­go, I think that kind of era­sure of the fear of the Oth­er hap­pens in this work,” says Cov­al, an occa­sion­al In These Times contributor.

The con­ver­sa­tion may have a ten­den­cy to repeat itself and become inter­nal­ized, Cov­al says, but he thinks the move­ment has done a good job of bring­ing in new peo­ple. Poets draw inspi­ra­tion from a vari­ety of sources and expe­ri­ences – hence the pro­fu­sion of ​“Where I’m From” poems, a sta­ple of most repertoires.

Many oth­ers opt to elab­o­rate on head­lines – almost always news sto­ries that affect­ed poets or were under-report­ed by main­stream media. The Urban Word team brought crowds to their feet with ​“Switch,” a poem about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in the black com­mu­ni­ty, par­al­lel­ing the mur­ders of Matthew Shep­ard and Rashawn Brazell: ​“Fem­i­nine ten­den­cies won’t allow me to make a fist/​A dev­il con­trol­ling my fore­arm to hang low like a lynched dream.”

Though the team didn’t make the finals, audi­ence mem­bers were so moved by the piece that they demand­ed the poets per­form it at the Chica­go The­atre after the final competition.

But the most com­mon source for inspi­ra­tion is always per­son­al expe­ri­ence. Sara Kass Levy, a poet from Boston, recount­ed an expe­ri­ence with sex­u­al vio­lence through the lens of a bat­tle­field: ​“You kissed grenades over the war­zone of my collarbones/​hissed hot bombs into my ear.”

“It’s dif­fi­cult because I feel like a lot of poets are try­ing to write things for social jus­tice,” Kass Levy says. ​“But if you don’t have that per­son­al con­nec­tion to it then the poem suf­fers for it.”

Across two oceans

The night of the finals, the mood in the green room at the Chica­go The­atre is ecsta­t­ic. Poets greet each oth­er with hugs, freestyle and swap iPods as crowds clam­or to get into the the­ater and cheer on the four teams who have made the last round: Jack­sonville, Fla., Hawaii, Bay Area and Leeds, U.K.

“A fes­ti­val like this is all about cel­e­brat­ing truth and word and dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, so it makes sense to bring in as much per­spec­tive in as pos­si­ble,” says Joseph Buck­ley, a poet rep­re­sent­ing Leeds.

At the end of the evening, Team Hawaii is declared the win­ner, but there is no spe­cial pageantry. As Cov­al is quick to remind the audi­ence, the win­ner of Brave New Voic­es gets noth­ing. Every­one – poets, coach­es, audi­ence – dances through­out the the­ater, one last burst of com­mu­nal exuberance.

Team Denver’s group piece was a fit­ting reminder of the festival’s mis­sion: ​“Togeth­er, we are 21 feet, five-and-a-half inch­es tall/​we are try­ing to make a difference/​we are more than the sum of our skeletons…”

The audi­ence erupt­ed in agree­ment with their clos­ing line: ​“We are not as small as you think.”

Videos

Slam High­lights:

Art and Activism at Life is Liv­ing Festival:

Poets on Poetry:

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