Poets Out Loud Youth Program 2020: The Workshops

This year, Poets Out Loud offered a series of slam poetry workshops to high schools around the Northern Rivers, NSW. The program will culminate in the region’s first ever Youth Slam on 1st November 2020. I’m lucky enough to be involved in the program as a Poet Mentor, and the experience has been amazing.

Poets Out Loud is an Arts collective founded by poet and teacher Sarah Temporal, based in the Northern Rivers. I met Sarah and got involved in POL in early 2019, when the first Poets Out Loud open mic night was held in Murwillumbah. I caught the tail end of the evening after a commute back from Uni amidst M1 traffic, and saw amazing poets like Matt Hetherington and Atlas Talisman take the mic. I managed to sneak off the waiting list last to read a poem called ‘Landscape of a body’. It was awesome to experience live poetry in my local region and I’ve volunteered and been involved socially with Poets Out Loud events ever since.

So how did I end up as a Poet Mentor for the POL Youth Program?

It all started around the end of 2019. Covid was still a world away and in the live poetry scene we were blissfully unaware of the restrictions we’d soon face. Sarah Temporal dreamed up an idea for the region’s first ever Youth Poetry Slam. POL would conduct a series of dynamic and interactive workshops in local high schools, culminating in a fantastic live event: a Youth Slam during Youth Week 2020. She approached me and asked, would I like to be a Poet Mentor? I jumped on board with such extreme enthusiasm, I’m surprised I didn’t scare her off. We were up and running.

The project was Sarah’s baby and she kicked into overdrive, working her butt off to make it happen (despite also having her own real baby!). Funding and Arts Grants were applied for. 2019 QLD Slam Poetry champion Anna Avocado came on board as the third mentor, and experienced performance poet Katinka Smit signed on as the fourth. Meetings were conducted. Wild ideas were thrown around. We had the support of Tweed Shire Council. Funding started coming through. Oh, and my belly continued to swell as my pregnancy progressed rapidly! Due to give birth soon, I prayed I would be able to teach a few workshops before my bambino popped out.

During the workshop planning stage, Sarah, Anna, Katinka and I did a workshop with the amazing poet and educator Emilie Zoe Baker, aka EZB. EZB has been running youth slam workshops in Victoria for many years and was a great inspiration to us as we nutted out our own unique POL workshop format. Check out her work at http://www.emiliezoeybaker.com. We wanted to empower young people to speak their minds and their hearts, and be heard. We wanted to show them that performance poetry is booming around the world, that their voices matter, that they can speak the world as they see it.

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The Workshops

Workshops were held at Cape Byron Steiner School, Murwillumbah High, Sathya Sai Secondary School, Nimbin Central School, and also Byron Youth Theatre and a Community workshop. Nimbin and the Community workshop were held online later in the year, after everything came to a halt due to Covid. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to hold the slam live during Youth Week in April 2020. This year, the slam is an online edition. All participants in the slam were offered free online mentoring to prepare, and with the support of Tweed Shire Council they were also given the opportunity to professionally film their performance for entry. Us mentors were lucky enough to film a poem each too! I’m planning on sharing my performance in my next post which will wrap-up the filming process and the slam.

All students come out of the workshops having written a slam poem either individually or in groups. Students are guided through a series of exercises designed to make the process interactive, spontaneous and fun. We support the students to think critically as well as creatively. The focus is on holding a safe, inclusive space for young people to express themselves, and we found they engaged with the workshops in really diverse and exciting ways.

For me, the experience was scary, awesome, rewarding, inspiring, challenging and so exciting! I am really passionate about helping young people find their voices, and demonstrating the power of words. Can’t wait to see the amazing poetry, words, rhymes and raps from the young people of our local region!!! The online Youth Slam is on Sunday 1st November at 3pm (daylight savings time).

You can get free tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/youth-poetry-slam-online-tickets-124653276305

For more information about the Youth Program and Poets Out Loud check out https://poetsoutloud.org/youth/