Fifth Annual Wisconsin Teen Poetry Slam
Spoken from the heart
     Poetry isn’t just about John Keats anymore. While the Romantic English poet might be rolling in his grave at some of the expression, he would probably find
some satisfaction that poetic expression is alive and well among high school students today.
    For the past five years, the UW-Madison’s Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI) has been reaching out to where today’s youth are in order to promote
literacy and to get students interested in and prepared for college. While OMAI is probably best known for its First Wave spoken word program that is using spoken
word as a recruiting tool for the UW to attract rising scholars who are interested in the world of hip hop and the spoken word, it has its greatest impact on students
on the high school level.
    Josh Healy, the coordinator of the effort in Madison’s high schools, is sold on the use of spoken word to reach today’s youth. “Spoken word really is a voice and
a powerful tool for young people today,” Healy said during an interview in the UW’s Memorial Union. “It came up in the 1990s and early 2000 and I remember
when we first started the poetry slams in Madison a few years ago and when you asked how many kids wrote poetry in a high school auditorium, you might get a
dozen hands. Now you ask that question and half the audience raises theirs hands. Ask them if they know someone who does poetry, everyone raises their hands.
Spoken word has become a way for young people to really feel they have a place to share what is really important to them in a fun, exciting way. It makes poetry
cool.”
    For the past year, Healy has been working with students at Madison’s four high schools during their lunch hours to develop their poetic skills. The group that
gathered at West High School, eventually numbering about a dozen students, is a very diverse group of students. While in the outside student environment they
might be expected to be members of different student groups, they are bound together in this classroom by their love for spoken word.  
    “When we all introduced each other, you could tell some of these students never had any interaction with each other, had never been with students who
come from the south side of Madison versus the far west side of Madison,” Healy said. “You have students who were from Eastern Europe and from Latin America
who are telling about their hometowns. The very first exercise we do is ‘Where I’m From.’ To me, the schools in Madison, the divisions that are going on in the
schools are not necessarily between the schools, but are within the schools in terms of who has access to resources, who is really getting encouraged and who is
getting discouraged from graduating. Spoken Word clubs in the schools are one of the few spaces where you have students from all different backgrounds really
coming together on their own terms, not forced, to create this community. That’s why I love it.”
    While the students feel cool about expressing themselves, they are also — sometimes unknowingly — developing important skills that will be useful to them
during their academic and professional careers. “Spoken word starts on the page,” Healy emphasized. “It starts with the writing. We have these spoken word clubs
that meet every week in every high school in Madison. We work intensively with the students. ‘You have something to say? That’s great.’ That’s the first step. What
do you want to say? Step two is let’s figure out a way so you can figure out how you can make your point in a more powerful way. Let’s break down the
metaphors. Let’s break down the rhyme scheme. Let’s break down why you are choosing to say it this way. So it really involves literacy and critical thinking. It
involves understanding history because a lot of references that are dropped. But it also involves things outside of the classroom. It involves home life. It involves
music and theater and hip hop and bringing all of those things into performance.”
    Perhaps the most important thing is that spoken word allows the students to express themselves in a safe environment where other students do listen. As the
students get up to practice their spoken word pieces at West, the diversity of topics is astounding, from the personal to the political. All of them end up being
profound. And there is no one there teasing or making fun of the others. It is a mature enclave in the sometimes immature world of high school life.
    “If you want to know what is going on in Madison, you ought to ask the young people,” Healy said. “They have the pulse of the city and the pulse of the
country better than anyone, I think, in terms of the issues really going on, some of which are above ground and some which aren’t. You hear kids delivering some
of the most brilliant, nuanced poems about immigration, about domestic abuse, about racism in the schools, but also about what it means to be a teenager such
as their first date. There is a kid with a poem about his first kiss and comparing that to the first contact between Columbus and Native Americans. He was playing
on the double metaphors of how his first kiss went wrong. It started off so well and then …”
    Healy feels that spoken word is one of the most student-empowered, democratic art forms out there for young people. “It is a very democratic culture and
community,” Healy said. “You have this space. But whatever you want to do on this space is validated. It’s really about finding your voice and sharing that voice.
If you want to sing, if you want to do theater, whatever you want to do within those three minutes [the allotted time for spoken word performances], it is free
speech. We don’t have censorship in our program. The only guideline is for the audience, not for the performers. And that is to ‘respect the mike.’ So you have to
respect the person who is performing and give them your attention. And that really creates a culture of support and validation and encouragement for people to
come out of their shell. At the same time, we always tell our students, if the audience is ‘respecting you on the mike,’ you have to respect your audience. If you
have ever been to a poetry slam, it’s all about the call and response. So if you are going to say something they don’t like, they have the right to let you know. And
they will! That’s about being accountable for your words. And so what it does is rather than me saying ‘You can’t say these ten words,’ the students create their
own accountability for what they think is accountable. It is democratic accountability. When we do our all-school performances, we stick within the guidelines.
So we won’t be dropping ‘F-Bombs’ and other words. We don’t do that. But beyond that and once we get to the Orpheum stage, really, it’s no censorship.”
    On April 12, OMAI will be hosting the Fifth Annual Teen Poetry Slam at the Orpheum Theater. For the first time of the competition, 20 poets from Milwaukee
and Madison will be competing on the same stage to earn slots to go to the National Teen Poetry Competition in Washington, D. C. in July. And according to
Healy, when the words poetry and slam are put together, students know they will be in for some raucous fun.
    And while it is a competition, the most important aspects of it aren’t competitive at all. “The victory is just getting on the stage,” Healy said. “The victory is just
telling your story in front of whoever will listen. That is the goal, for them to share what they feel. Once they come off stage, even the kids who don’t make it say
‘Wow, that was great. I did that. That was me.’ That’s the best part.”
    The Fifth Annual Wisconsin Teen Poetry Slam will be held April 12 at the Orpheum Theater, 216 State Street. The competition begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are
$5 for students and $10 general admission. Tickets may be purchased at the Orpheum Theater. Visit their website or call 255-6005 for  ticket information,
Josh Healy, a staff member of UW-Madison's
Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives, is
organizing the Wisconsin Teen Poetry Slam.
By Jonathan Gramling