The Brooklyn Rail
Critical Perspectives on Art, Politics and Culture
July/August 2005
Streets
New Skool Slam
Streets
In a shift from the past series of neighborhood-based reportage, students from the spring session of the Brooklyn Rail/Urban Word NYC New Skool Journalism Workshop covered the city’s annual Teen Poetry Slam championships.
Nigger
by Alisa UmanskayaStreets
I watched each poet, learned from each poet, slowly felt each poet, but became just one. I hadn’t slept so I couldn’t focus except then, when she was crying, I was crying. Raw passion was onstage, surging from the face, hers. Her body became her vessel; she smacked my brain across the face, Maya’s. Maya Williams.
Rebel Music
by Nicoletta BumbacStreets
Poets are the sensitive scribes of our era. They document facts, mingling emotion, statistics with realities of third world countries to third floor abuse stories recalling mom’s late-night crack flings upstairs.
Slammed
by Tamara LeacockStreets
Over the course of six preliminaries, four semifinals, and one grand slam final, confined in a region of five boroughs and in a mere three weeks, Urban Word NYC hosted its seventh annual teen poetry slam, providing the networking space for a cesspool of eclectic, vintage youth and future revolutionaries.
Keep Writing
by Ujijji DavisStreets
It was dark and quiet and the only thing that I could see was a lit stage that became home to teens who filled the room with poetry and energy. Alongside me sat families and poets waiting for their names to be called, names that would someday be called again for a spot on the New York City team for the National Teen Poetry Slam Championships in San Francisco.
