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The Teenage (R)evolution of Poetry; The Poetic (R)evolution Of Teenagers

Teen Poetry/Poetry in the Schools links

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  • Youth Speaks, founded by James Kass in 1996, is based in San Francisco:

    Youth Speaks
    The Writer’s Center
    2169 Folsom Street, Studio 100
    San Francisco, CA 94104
    phone 415.255.9035
    fax 415.255.9065
    email info@youthspeaks.org

    Brave New Voices is the annual teen poetry slam competition and festival, initiated by Youth Speaks. It’s gone international, and is held in a different city each year, bringing teen teams from all over to interact with the local community of poets.

  • Urban Word NYC is New York’s teen poetry/spoken word nexus, founded in 1999 with Teachers & Writers Collaborative:

    Urban Word NYC
    242 West 27th Street, Suite 3B (between 7th & 8th Aves.)
    New York, NY 10001
    phone 212.352.3495
    fax 212.352.8371
    email info@urbanwordnyc.org

  • Young Chicago Authors “encourages self-expression and literacy among Chicago’s youth through creative writing, performance and publication.”

  • WritersCorps is a project sponsored by the San Francisco city arts commission that sends writers to schools, juvenile detention facilities, social service agencies and after-school programs to “transform individuals and communities through the written word.” There are also WritersCorps programs in the District of Columbia and the Bronx, New York City.

  • The Academy of American Poets has an extensive Online Poetry Classroom stocked with great poems to teach, lesson plans and essays on teaching poetry.

  • David Huang’s Poetic Dream has a great photo-essay on Brave New Voices 2000, the third National Teen Slam held at the (inter)national youth poetry festival in San Francisco during National Poetry Month, April 2000.

  • Elizabeth Thomas’ UpWords Poetry site has resources for young poets, writers and teachers from around Connecticut and the Northeast — writing and publishing tips, youth-friendly publishing opportunities and a calendar of youth-friendly literary events.

  • The documentary film Poetic License premiered at the April 2000 festival, but the Web site makes it clear this is more than just a movie: it’s a multimedia curriculum packet for teachers who want to bring poetry into the classroom and an online poetry journal for teens from around the world.

  • California Poets in the Schools has been sending poets into classrooms, publishing anthologies of poems by its teacher-poets and their students, and developing lesson plans for more than 30 years since its beginning as San Francisco State University’s Pegasus Project in the 1960s.

  • Teachers & Writers Collaborative sponsors Writer-in-Residence programs and workshops for teachers and students in the New York area. TWC also offers a vast catalog of publications about teaching writing, a collection of articles by writers and poets on teaching imaginative writing, and other good resources.

  • Teachers & Writers Discussion Group (formerly WriteNet, the TWC forum), is a great way to connect with other writers bringing poetry into the classroom.

  • About.com’s Fiction Writing guidesite began as “Creative Writing for Teens” and while it’s no longer specifically directed at younger writers, it’s still chock-full of basic information guides, how-tos, writing exercises and links.
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