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13th Annual Chicago Schools - Louder than a Bomb - Poetry Slam Festival
March 2013, Chicago IL: Listen up! Teen poets from the Windy City grabbed the microphone and told the stories of their lives at the thirteenth annual “Louder Than a Bomb - Return to the Craft” (LTAB) Chicago Youth Poetry Festival at the Cadillac Palace Theater. Winners were selected from individual and team categories.
LTAB, which is the world’s largest youth poetry festival, was founded in 2001 by Kevin Coval, and Anna West in collaboration with Young Chicago Authors. LTAB was created to give Chicago city youth a platform to share their stories.
The festival has since become a “bridge” for young people from diverse backgrounds to come together and find a common ground through their narratives. LTAB poets often incorporate themes of empathy, love, and forgiveness in their work to reconcile difficulties in their lives and relationships. LTAB is a friendly competition that emphasizes self-expression and community via poetry, oral storytelling, and hip-hop spoken word for young people from all neighborhoods, socio-economic statuses, race and culture to come together and understand one another.
LTAB 2013 featured over 900 students from Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. For the high-school student slam segments - a tournament competition pitted teams in two preliminary matches before the winning teams went against each other in the semifinal and final rounds. One hundred and ten teams (110) contended for four spots in the final team round.
On Wednesday night (March 6), Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanual was in attendance as Northside College Preparatory High School student Emma Coleman was awarded the Individual Winner of the 2013 Louder Than a Bomb poetry competition. Team Kuumba Lynx emerged victorious in the LTAB team competition.
Among the supporters of the 2013 LTAB is the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer is supporting a yearlong research project examining how the Young Chicago Author’s annual LTAB poetry festival fosters a shift from fear to empathy and demonstrates love and forgiveness. The Institute’s support will help LTAB create an educator toolbox and expand their curriculum to other cities nationwide. This is a project of the Fetzer Advisory Council on Arts.
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