By writing poetry, you are engaging in a conversation with yourself and the world around you. It’s a time for teenagers to slow down, take a moment with themselves, try to understand what’s up with them. When teens, in turn, share your poetry, they are entering into a conversation with each other and the many worlds around them. It’s a beautiful connection, and one that teenagers seem able to thrive in.

While each of them is developing their own voice, they are able to appreciate the voices around them. All teenagers are looking for a place in which they can define themselves and communicate those findings. Poetry gives them that. And at the same time, it connects them to every person who has ever written or spoken poetry in all of its various forms throughout history, and throughout the world.

Because the pop culture all around teens swells with spilled and meaningless words (after you’ve heard ten thousand sit com stars tell each other “I love you,” the words start to seem meaningless), it’s important that teens find the meaning in words, and explore what language really means. And it is important that they do it in their own sound, their own tongue, their own music. Because once teenagers begin to understand that poetry is a way to find freedom, and that they already have the tools they need to do it, they’re off and running. And when teens start paying attention to the words they use in their poetry, then they become better readers — ones who are paying attention to the way authors and other poets use words, and why they use them the ways they do.

Now Taz reads Basho, and is in the middle of his second piece, a series of haikus that can be read together in hiphop rhythm. He calls it his great experiment in bringing the past into today’s rhythm — “I’m going on a haiku trip hop,” is what he’ll say if you ask him.

All hope for the future of poetry lies in youths. The new renaissance is upon us. Teen poets are becoming part of a new cultural vanguard, but one that is open to anyone willing to do the work. Poetry is opening doors between teens, becoming an anti-violence tool, becoming a hip new way to communicate. It’s a great tool for teachers to use — kids enjoy it, it relates to many musical forms, narrative history and cultural explorations, and crosses many borders in the classroom. Not only will you have teens reading and writing poetry, but they will be hearing and singing it too. So, bring poetry to the classroom — not only on the page, but on CD and video too. Learn to hear it, learn to love it, is what we say to the packed auditoriums during school visit assemblies now, where at least half of the audience usually raises their hand when we ask, “hey, any of you out there interested in poetry?”

~James Kass
Founder & Director, Youth Speaks
Co-Chair, National Youth Poetry Slam Executive Committee