Poetry
Poetic lives III: NYCs Youth Poetry Scene
The Bringing the Noise youth open mic doesn’t start until 6 pm, but already teenagers swarm the sidewalk outside the venerable Nuyorican Poets Café. Julio blocks the entrance for all except the signed up performers, as DJ Reborn gets the music spinning- a cool out mood mix of hip hop and R&B. Once inside, the crowd settles into the warm orange glow of the café. They sit and stand anywhere they can- at the old tables, against the seasoned wood bar, on the floor, lined up against the brick wall- or they heap up to the open balcony to grab whatever seat or standing room is left. All eyes are on the low center stage, empty but for the banner that identifies the organization and the concept behind this open mic: “Youth Speaks- because the next generation can speak for itself.”
For the next three hours, in a space as full as it gets, over 30 teen poets will hit the stage to perform their poems, freestyle, and rap. With a range of poetry and performing skills, they captivate the mostly young audience, which is just as varied and complex as the performers themselves. Drawn from the five boroughs, the crowd criss-crosses racial, ethnic, gender, and lifestyle lines. From Brooklyn to Queens, from the housing projects to the Lower East Side to the townhouses of the Upper East Side, out of public and private schools, teenage poets come forward and speak up. Backpacks loaded with composition books and ballpoint pens, they swap rhymes and heroic couplets after school, memorize their poems on subways and street corners and perform them in venues across town.
Like any new community, the youth poetry scene in New York has grown through word of mouth: poets bring their friends as well as their crew or cliques from school, although few bring their parents. Sometimes teachers bring students to the open mic series in order to expose them to a world in which writing and poetry can take on a new life. There are poets mentors here too, both old time performers and newcomers to the spotlight.
Although many of the youth poets at Bringing the Noise are the “regulars” who provide much of the reason for the event’s success, some are stepping up to the mic for the first time. Rita J., a young poet from Staten Island, stands nervously on stage with crumpled paper in hand and reads a poem about difficult familial relations and feeling isolation and loneliness. No matter what’s said on stage, the crowd greets each poet with enthusiasm and support – all of it genuine. The same is true for any poet who takes the mic for the first time; they seem to know it won’t be their last. Describing her debut, one poet says: ”now I am a confident performer, and I am able to share my words with an audience, without an ordeal of shaky legs and a palpitating heart. After walking off the stage for the first time I knew that I would be back again and again and again. The rush that I feel from a performance is what skydivers look for or think they have found.”
Is it surprising that so many teens are taken to poetry? The truth is that almost every teenager writes, but often in isolation and without the sense that what they’re writing is important. In the face of so much negative hype over what the next generation is doing and saying, it’s an amazing experience to watch teenagers represent themselves with such poetic sophistication and personal insight. They come to the open mic because there’s a community in the room with which they can identify. They get inspiration- some have said they’ve come up with a list of new things to write about after the exposure to new circumstances and perspectives they’ve gained through others’ poetry.
People tend to think of teens as closed off because they don’t like school, but in reality they’re open to most everything.
In the few short years that I’ve been directing Youth Speaks, a non-profit organization that brings young people together through the written and spoken word, I’ve seen every type of teenager develop into a poet. Since 1999, over 200 youths have participated in our free after-school workshops, and thousands have performed at the ongoing open mic series, a lot of them culled from the program. In the chaotic world of high school education, Youth Speaks offers a community of young writers an after-school arts program structured around the creative needs of teenagers.
Many of these teens are natural performers, rhythmically moving in and out of language; others are quiet observers of the world around them. They come in every form- as rappers, street poets, closet artists. Most recruitment is done through word of mouth, teen to teen, either through our public events or our in-school presentations. Because the resources are free and open to everyone 13-19 years old, every kind of teenager comes in search of a community of other young writers. As one youth poet says, “The aspect of Youth Speaks that has helped me the most as a writer is diversity. Rappers need to be around poets, poets around essayists and essayists around novelists.”
They come to the open mic because there’s a community in the room with which they can identify. As one youth, who took part in the workshops through Pride Site One, a drug rehabilitation program we linked up with a year ago recalls, “It was destiny. At first, I felt like a rebel because I thought that I had a harder life story than the others. But what I found out was that we all had similar experiences. I realized that I could begin to accept other people for who they were despite our differences in background. I figured if these people could hear me, then those from my background could hear me too. The response to my poetry was like a dream.”
Teens don’t receive school credit for coming, but they can list their achievements in the program on their college applications. All participants do so out of their own desire, because writing is their main tool of expression. Youth Speaks also publishes all of the workshop participants poetry in an annual anthology called Speak Your Mind, and 40 poets are featured on our first self-produced live spoken word compilation CD, Verbal Fabric. Many of them have gone on to win local teen writing competitions, and most, if not all, have performed in both public performance/ open mic events and in at least one teen poetry slam (a judged competition where poets are scored).
At the first Youth Speaks teen poetry slam in 1999, one young woman left the stage crying, frazzled from forgetting some lines she had memorized for her performance. After returning to the workshops, some months later she found her voice, won the second annual teen slam last year and went on to represent New York at Brave New Voices, the national teen poetry slam in San Francisco. Her advice for new youth slam poets: “It’s not about the score and it’s certainly not about who will eventually make it to the nationals. Your purpose is to speak to another… to tell someone your story. Words are priceless. You either use them to dance for someone else, or you use them to state yourself.”
On a national level, teenagers are writing poetry with more drive and enthusiasm than ever before. At this year’s Brave New Voices national teen poetry slam in Ann Arbor (MI), I heard voices covering every subject under the haze of American culture: dating, living in the projects, girl-empowerment, gender political poetry, hip hop music, mustard in a hay field, immigration, the perils of public education, poetry as life force. The entire time I was in awe of their steadfast commitment to poetry as form, substance, change, and movement.
One of the most explosive offshoots of the weekend happened outside of the organized slam events. Youth poets in numbers from 25-50 huddled up in “ciphers” (poetry circles) and recited, performed, freestyled words, music, beat boxing- all of it poetry. These ciphers lit up after every organized slam event. No scores, no adults, no censorship- just teenagers feeling their way through the rhythms of language. Policed only by the astoundingly progressive politics of the group. Anyone willing to grab the free air and breathe a poem into it was encouraged to do so. If a young poet stepped up with a sexist or homophobic rhyme, the group would take away his sacred airtime or sometimes end the cipher completely, as happened only once while I was watching, thus sending the message that only love and respect were honored here.
Youth Speaks offers access to the thoughts and rhythms of the next generation of writers, activists, artists, and leaders. Those who care about the reality of teenagers today, meaning those of us who reject armchair solutions and media distortions, know that only active involvement in the education of today’s youth will change anything for the future. Teenagers are angry, articulate, focused, motivated towards change, and poetically fearless. Our hope is that the world will open its ears.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________YOUTH SPEAKS OFFERS ITS FREE SUMMER WORKSHOPS FOR TEENS 13-19 BEGINNING JULY 11, 2001. THE YS BI-WEEKLY SUMMER OPEN MIC AT THE NUYORICAN POETS CAFÉ STARTS JULY 3, 6-9 P.M.
THE 2001 ISSUE OF SPEAK YOUR MIND COMES OUT IN JUNE.
HIP HOP
By Morgan Cousins
Hip Hop must die to be
Be reborn in the
New millennium
Cause everyone’s tired
Of the same old idioms
Mixed on new beats
Or new beats and
Dum-dums on baby
Teeth
We had French vanilla,
Butter pecan, to the
Peta- ricans. From
The “brrr’s of pigeons
To unfaithful women
Who called themselves
Widows cause suburban
Doors could breathe
Minds of so called
Prodigies remained
Blunted and stunted
Cause that’s how hits were made
We had Machiavelli
Rebirth of history
2000, millennium, and end of days
self destruction went
through convulsions
and transformed our cities
our urban suburban ghetto
societies
which painted the impenetrable
picture of who we should be
we rocked gold chains to
bug clocks and now
blue diamond rocks
symbolizing our
superficial status
as we continuously fail
to hear cries of Hawaiian Sophie
carters dying
cause of lack of Christ
Hip hop, oh this hip hop culture
That changed from self worth
Is now self murder
We rocked Pumas to tims
Girbaud to Iceberg
But blunts stayed the same
As our hip hop culture
Slowly fused together with the
Crack game
You’ve gone from
Poppin’ cheeks to casio beats
While heads bopped
Extemporaneously
You made vocabulary
Incoherent phrases of
Mixed tenses, and brick fences so we
Could not escape
By way of Spiga
You’ve released a
Money hungry,
Food secondary;
Spawn
Created fiends
Hungry for names
Unable to pay
To fill their
Maw
I think you’ve got me
Singing the blues
Got fools looking for the
Red stripe on the heels
Of shoes
Made us proud of project
Wars
While we lived in worlds
With no doors
As you became the only
Future
Raped us, turned
Us into new creatures
Into the best
Non-paid advertisers,
She rocks Gucci on
Her coochie, but
Gucci’s not paying her
Hung those nooses
Round our necks
As we became
Platinum flaunters
In the projects
You through my independence
Out the door
Called me bitch
Gold digger
Money sexer
15 min. diggin’ pleasure
non-provider
dick rider
baby father havin’
diamond ring rockin’
giving that ass
low class to no cash
pigeon, chicken
the mistress, the ghetto
princess
I don’t want a record deal
Cause I can’t spit
Rabid spiel
And then preach
God when I’m done
Perform rehearsed
Spiritual factors when
I’ve won the prize
The prize of Africa
But not sure where I went
It’s not a country
It’s a continent
Not looking for the talent
I’ve got
Looking for the hardest
Dick
The loosest twat
The who can
Spit a verse that
Don’t mean squat
“nah mean” em and
awe, like they’ve never
been taught
walk around bustin’
shots, wavin’ a Rolex
watch and swear it’s
fame they got
and that
cross they rock,
God know them not
It’s you. You, the gaudy seed-bearer,
The hardship hearer, the music maker.
The death bringer, ears ringer
Soul shaker, movie maker
Unity sayer
You take,
And manifest them into
Devilish dreams
That seem like what is
Wanted
As words lay spoken
We are named token
Hopes stay broken
Oh hip hop
Where did your love go?
You who preach this unity
Purely for show.
Contributor
Jen WeissJen Weiss is the director of Youth Speaks NY. She is co-author of Brave New Voices.