Louder Than A Bomb is the largest youth poetry slam festival... In the world. It also happens to be one of the greatest experiences of my life. Co-founded by a man with whom I spent a week-long workshop with, Kevin Coval, Louder Than A Bomb unites Chicagoland middle school, high school, and college students for a few weeks at the begining of March. Crossing The Street is the kick-off to LTAB, where all the schools meet under one roof in the south side and watch guest poets perform, meet new people, and write a group piece with strangers. Later, when I posted pictures from the events, I had people I hadn't even met adding me on Facebook just because I was a part of LTAB. It was great. Writing with these four strangers... Was incredible. Our prompt was our town. I wrote about how my suburbia was clean-cut, and then you had another girl's suburbia about drinking in warehouses, and then there was someone talking about teen pregnancy in her neighborhood, and a powerful girl who spoke of time stopping so that she couldn't hear gunshots. It was beautiful.
Here's a snipet from my on-spot poem:
[Town Name] was created from boxes stacked on upon boxes full of lawyers and doctors. The doctors could repair your spine but never give you one...We were force-fed church doctrines, math equations, ethics, and history - the study of a culture we could never have because boxes are square and perfect, but humans aren't shapes. We're feelings, and eyes, and hearts, and hands, and neurons, and neurosis, and anything but symmetric.
More about LTAB:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uexKjhcfr8Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuWNyuZyBMc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgZAb3eWIG0
Monday, February 23, 2009
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