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Local
Youth Heading to Slam Poetry Competition in D.C.
Five-person
team from Compton nonprofit Peace4Kids to compete July 15
By
Gene C. Johnson Jr.
Bulletin Staff Writer
COMPTON – Something
interesting happened to this year’s five-member team from Compton’s
Peace4Kids, as well as previous teams who have competed in the annual
Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Competition, said
Zaid Gayle, Peace4Kids’ executive director.
While preparing for this year’s July 15 competition to be held
in Washington, D.C., and with the coaching of spoken word artist Joshua
Silverstein, teenagers such as Richard Fuller, Gayle said, have remained
true to hip hop and yet still are able to grasp traditional literary
structure and expression.
“When Richie came into the program (four years ago) he wasn’t
really into literary (works) and writing,” he said. “And
now he’s talking about metaphors, he talks about similes. He
talks about word play. These are all things that’s he experienced
because he fallen in love with the art of prose.”
So before deciding to enter the competition, Fuller said he was more
interested in just rap, unaware of some of the similarities the urban
style had with traditional poetry.
“Then I started getting techniques to turn my rap into poems – and
then I started writing poems,” said the 17-year-old, who one
day wants to open a poetry café in his native Long Beach.
Some of the topics Fuller said he writes about range from the jail
system to family to romance.
“You can’t hand a kid Shakespeare. You can’t hand
a kid (Homer’s) The Odyssey and say ‘This is what you need
to do in terms of literary form – learn that.’ It’s
not their language,” Gayle said. “Their language has been
hip hop and it’s been their form.”
“Well let’s take rap and let’s change that prose
a little bit – and let’s look at it in the form of poetry
prose. How does that look?” he said. “These are kids who
were not really interested in books, now will go to Borders and spend
the
afternoon there reading a book.”
Much of Fuller’s preparation for the 11th Annual Brave New Voices
International Youth Poetry Slam Festival has come with the assistance
of Silverstein and by simply speaking into a mirror.
“I have a speech impediment so I talk into the mirror and I record
my voice,” he said. “And I get as much practice as I can
on open mics (at spoken word venues).”
Peace4Kids, a non-profit founded in 1998 as a support system for foster
children, has been competing in the slam for the past five years, Gayle
said.
The competition is open for kids 14 to 19 years old and will include
500 poets from across four countries worldwide.
“You’re being judged on your performance, your writing
and just the overall feel of the poem,” Silverstein said. “Anything
can go. I think what goes is what’s authentic. The more authentic
the poem is the higher score. Poetry, in general, has to be very honest
and very real – and very personal.”
“This is a (poetry) slam so it’s going to be a very energy,
intense, almost aggressive competition,” he said. “All
these kids from all over the country are going to be there to share
the word – and
the power of the word. That’s a beautiful and amazing thing,
and the kids know that.”
And for 16-year-old CeCe Cuza Howard, who is also a member of Peace4Kids
five-member poetry team, poetry and the spoken word has helped her
get through a phase of loneliness.
“I was pretty much the only person I could talk to,” Howard
said. “Talking
to myself got kind of old, so I decided to try to write it (my thoughts)
down for other people to hear it eventually.”
Other agencies expected to attend include the Los Angeles-based Kaos
Project Blowed Youth Poetry and I E Poetry, which is based in Fontana,
said Katie Andriulli, an event spokesperson.
The finals, which are free to the public, take place July19 in Washington
D.C.’s Lincoln Theater where HBO will be filming a live documentary
on Brave New Voices.
“This year’s festival, taking place just three months before
the presidential election, will give poets the opportunity to directly
address the youth perspective on local and national issues, using spoken
word as a tool for civic engagement, arts education and literacy development,” Andriulli
said.
For more information about the 11th Annual Brave New Voices International
Youth Poetry Slam Festival, send an e-mail to BNV@youthspeaks.org.
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