21 Search results for "slam poetry"

Anytime an underground art becomes commercialized it is simultaneously at risk of becoming compromised. We saw this happen in the ballroom scene, rap music and hip hop culture. The same issue surfaced in the poetry scene when Russell Sims began to take spoken word and turn it into a commercialized art. Nothing is wrong with […]

I would like to believe that there is a moment in everyone’s life that becomes a point of definition. This if nothing else has been the reality of my experience. My moment of definition was March 2006 when I was a participant in the finals of the Cleveland city wide poetry slam. Two weeks prior […]

Jimmy Santiago Baca, a leading contemporary Latino poet writing in the United States, reminds us that “Poetry’s mission is to subvert, to question, to challenge, provoke, to flail one’s vulnerability and voice into the marvelous whirlwind of poetry’s awe, flagging at the horns of the raging beast that is societies gluttonous comfort…affirm poetry at any […]

It only took two minutes for this slam poet to sum up the devastating emotions that are involved with police brutality, and the interesting part was that she did it through Mad Libs.

Visceral, in your face, in your ears, in your snapping fingers, and tapping feet, spoken word poetry sprang loosely from the expressive energies of the blues, the Harlem Renaissance, and hip-hop music which had each permeated black communities throughout America over the course of the century. Mimicking the 1960s beat poets of coffee houses and […]

Youth Speaks’ Brave New Voices a big draw David Wagner, San Francisco Chronicle | July 19, 2011 Brave New Voices, the annual slam-poetry competition put on by San Francisco spoken-word nonprofit Youth Speaks, has come a long way since its inception. The first competition, held in 1998, featured only four teams. This year’s event drew 50 […]

No matter how much sex there can be or how generous your pay checks come, you still have not experienced real amazement until you’ve been to a Chicago-style poetry slam. For four years, the end of February and beginning of March has marked the season in which I unleashed my craft. As a freshman in […]

Over the next several weeks I will be writing a series on  The Ballroom Scene. Wikipedia cheapens the culture by diluting the definition, calling it a “subculture of the LGBT community involving staged competitive, drag fashion performances.” The ballroom scene is not only a new black art, but it comes with a lot more baggage […]

By DJ Ferguson My mother, no stranger to emotional blackmail, had no hesitation in using it on behalf of her god in an attempt to reconvert me. “Don’t you think God (Yahweh) ever mourns?” she asked, hoping to get me to feel sorry for the possessive West Asian shepherd god whom I no longer worship. […]

Editor’s Note: April is Black Women’s History Month. Throughout this month, Black Youth Project is celebrating Black women. This month is also National Minority Health Month, Autism Awareness Month, Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Child Abuse Prevention Month. We are interested in publishing works that address these topics and the things surrounding them. by Maya Williams […]

“This apology is a symptom of a social disease seen from football rosters in Ohio to busses in New Delhi. With outbreaks of slut shaming and victim blaming mentalities and no cure in sight under this current system of patriarchy.” As a survivor, this video was difficult to watch. I imagine it would be hard for […]

The prevalence of violence against young Black people has become a constant phenomenon in American life. While Black folx of all genders face unique struggles with anti-Blackness, police surveillance, and state-sanctioned murder, young Black men are often featured in mainstream media most prominently as victims of these systems and processes of oppression. This poem from Akeem […]