More than 450 teenage wordsmiths from around the world will converge in the Bay Area on Saturday, April 23, for one of the most sought-after crowns in the poetry world — the champion ranking in the eighth annual international youth poetry slam festival.
For some of these poets, who are traveling from places as far-flung as England, the Deep South and Hawaii, there’s one problem: The day marks the beginning of Passover.
And when the sun sets, the performers won’t be looking for the afikomen or lighting candles. They’ll be in the spotlight showing off their spoken word skills at the Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco in front of a rowdy and supportive crowd of hundreds.
James Kass, the founder and executive director of the Youth Speaks, takes responsibility for what he calls an unfortunate logistical oversight that he expects will cut ticket sales by a few hundred.
“It is my favorite holiday!” says Kass, a 36-year-old, third-generation New York-born Jew.
To make up for the questionable timing, Youth Speaks will have a seder in the form of an outdoor picnic during the day at Crissy Field in San Francisco for those who are participating that night.
The seder is in line with the spirit of Youth Speaks, which supports a diversity of voices and experience.
Kass was getting his master’s in fine arts at San Francisco State University in 1996 when he performed in his first spoken word slam. The event did not sell out, but Kass saw a great potential in the budding movement that took its roots in Chicago.
Around that time — in what Kass describes as “the best thing that could have happened for Youth Speaks” — S.F. State rejected his request to hold poetry workshops for youth on campus. The decision forced his efforts off campus.
Youth Speaks held the first teen poetry slam in the country in April 1996 at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. At the same time the grassroots organization began holding poetry workshops for students and teachers in Bay Area urban high schools from Oakland to Union City.
At first the organization lured students to its programs with the promise of free personal computers. (With the dot-coms blossoming on practically every city block, computer donations to Youth Speaks rolled in.) But even after the computers ran out, the students stuck with poetry and the enrollment in programs and at the slams grew.
“The art form has taken on a life of its own. It has become its own frame of reference,” says Kass.
Aided by the success of spoken word artists such as Saul Williams, the popularity in the spoken word movement has mounted. Unlike the days when Kass was growing up and the romanticized Beat poets were his inspiration, the youth now feed off the work of their peers — who are published both in print, audio and video.
“In 1996 I’d go into classrooms and ask how many of them wrote poetry and two out of 100 would raise their hands. Now it is half the class,” says Kass. “Teachers used to dread teaching poetry and now it is their favorite thing to teach.”
Better yet, Kass says, slam poetry unifies teens from diverse backgrounds by literally putting them on a common stage.
“It is accessible,” he says. “You don’t need anything but your voice, a pen and paper.”
When Kass was starting out as a poet, he’d wade through the agonizing months of submitting a poem to a publication, waiting to hear a response and finally seeing his work in print. With spoken word, young poets receive an immediate reaction. It is an important draw to the art form, Kass says, for an age group whose feelings are constantly in flux and whose skills are always improving.
“Kids can write a poem on the bus, read it that night at a slam and get an immediate reaction.”
To the response of those who might cringe at a poem being made public hours after it has be written, Kass says that this is the nature of the form — that spoken word is about making poetry “what you need it to be.”
“At slams early on, they might mimic what they’ve seen before — angry Bush poems. But as they continue to write, the poems get more complex.”
“Brave New Voices: the 8th Annual Grand Slam Finals National Youth Poetry Slam” will be held 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 23, at the Masonic Auditorium, 1111 California St., S.F. $5 for students under 20, $15 general. Information: (415) 292-9191.