Teen Poetry Slam, Spring 2007

The annual spring teen poetry slam at the local public library was bigger and better than ever. Seventeen teams registered, representing most of the local junior highs, high schools, and home-schooling groups. The library’s exhibition gallery was filled with slammers, slam fans, slam friends, adult volunteers, and proud parents.

Beth and the library decided to conduct two slam rounds instead of the usual three. Last spring, when I was a slam judge, there were eight or nine teams, and we conducted three rounds, and we still went past closing time.

I attended in case the library needed another judge or volunteer. But they roster was filled and I had the luxury of sitting back and enjoying the performances. I had tried to coax my 14-year-old daughter out to participate, but she pleaded shyness and stayed home.

A raucous night. Lots of cheering and hooting and hollering. I detected puzzled looks on some parents’ faces. They were wondering how a poetry event, which they had heard was boring and long, could be so loud and, well, fun.

It is a wonder, isn’t it, that so many kids could get jazzed up about poetry? The participants are judged on the quality of the poetry and presentation skills. You can tell that some of the kids are in drama or speech/debate. They project their voices, enunciate words, move their bodies. The performance sometimes is more polished than the poetry.

There are other kids who wear black outfits and black eye shadow and dye their hair black. Goth kids, artsy kids, kids that choose – or have been thrust into – outcast status. They’re taunted by the jocks and preps, or so says my daughter. My son, now 22, wore baggy jeans and black T-shirts and had natural black hair which he wore in a fro. Smart kid, wise guy, always in trouble, skipping class to board at the skate park behind the high school. He wrote all the time, went to Young Writers Camp in the Big Horn Mountains where, for a week each summer, he found his soulmates from all over the state, kids who chose writing and sculpting over sports and the status quo.

I like these kids. In my Catholic high school, I was an outcast writer in a uniform, a super-achiever in the classroom, a scrapper on the basketball court. No room for rebellion, really, and my friends were cut from the same cloth. They were good friends then and they grew up to be good citizens and kind parents. I don’t see them very often, as I live 2,000 miles away from my teenhood.

After high school, I discovered that some of those classmates of mine who were invisible to me – they were interesting people. Artsy and rebellious, stoners and drinkers. As I grew distant from my old high school pals, I grew closer to people who took the harder route, either because they didn’t know any better or because they chose something different. Some ended up dead, some are recluses out in the Florida swamps, others live in the ‘burbs and – like me – adopted the protective coloration of middle class America.

The kids at the slam are at the beginning of their journeys. Some think that school, for the most part, is a crock of shit. Others enjoy school because they look forward to English or drama class every day. Others are smart and get good grades because they want to go to film school at USC or drama at Yale. Some of these kids go to the alternative school, some live at the residential center for teens that can’t live at home. Some are juvenile offenders, in the current lingo. Their parents beat them up, or preferred meth to child-rearing.

There’s a team here from that residential center. One’s a white rapper, the other a comedian who memorizes all his poetry and the other is a quiet boy who writes about love. Man, these kids have their work cut out for them. Talented but abandoned. I’ve watched this group improve over the past couple years. Better poetry, better performances. They’re talented enough to go on to college and grad school or maybe a career on the comedy circuit. Who knows what else.

But Jason wears a U.S. Marines’ T-shirt and cammie pants and a garrison cap. I can guess where he’s going if he graduates – or even if he doesn’t, as the military becomes more desperate for recruits with each passing month.

Here’s a generation of talented kids. This past week, college kids a few years older were mowed down on the Virginia Tech campus. Other 18- and 19-year-olds were blown away by an Iraq I.E.D. Scores of young people killed themselves. That happens every week. Teen suicide is a big problem in rural states, especially cold, windy rural states such as Wyoming.

I enjoy cheering on the teen slammers. We all have fun tonight because we only have a limited number of these events in our lives. I fix in my memory the high school senior who performs her comedic poem about fending off a boy’s unwelcome advances. The white rapper’s poem about life on the street hits me in the gut. A junior high girl returns to her seat after performing a moving poem about a love gone bad. She turns and smiles at her mom, who wags a finger at her. In 20 years, the girl will have her own teens and will wag her finger at them. I might be around to watch my grandchildren in action at poetry slams. Or I may not.

The future is out there in all its glory – and scary as hell.

Tonight, though, we are in a room with the young poets. And happy.

Cheyenne, Wyo., April 21, 2007