Last night i was lucky enough to attend the final night of the brave new voices poetry competition for young people with students from Manual Arts. The night was an amazing reminder of the power of words… As young people from Denver, Albuquerque, NYC and the Bay Area competed for recognition as national slam champs, my students and i were inspired by the breadth and depth of literary masters young in their career as words smiths. My students were especially impressed and surprised by how much they enjoyed watching youth their age take the mic and address issues with such passion, openness and wisdom. issues that we have just begun to explore in our community studies class; racism, domestic violence, access to healthy food, the destruction of public education, cultural hegemony, war, environmental degradation, loss of childhood, gang violence, youth drug addiction, consumerism, body image, true activism and social change and the list goes on…. Touching every human in the house through threads of universal themes that help to make up who we are as individuals and as a collective species. The sharing of these diverse yet interconnected experiences, and more so the manner in which the gravity of each theme was communicated, made for an absolutely delicious evening. Walking away more confident that they had a voice, my students were definitely glad to have been in attendance… And so was i to watch them and listen to the power of when youth speaks…
Now go forth and create your own poetry…