Young wordsmiths

In late March and early April, young, local poets performed around downtown Baton Rouge for Forward Arts’ 11th annual All City Teen Poetry Slam Festival. The event theme, “Here, Still,” paid homage to the city’s strength after a difficult year and to Kaiya Smith, a past festival participant who died in July 2016. On April 7, four of the teenage poets performed in the Old State Capitol during the Arts Council’s Ebb & Flow Festival. We talked to these young poets about why they like performing and what their favorite poem means to them. forwardarts.org

JAZMYNE SMITH, 18
LSU

What do you like about poetry?
I like being able to be vulnerable and speak openly about things that have been on my mind.

Tell us about one of the poems you performed.
My favorite one is going to be the “Black Exorcism” piece, because it’s funny and yet both urgent and socially important at the same time. So, I like being able to use humor and satire to make an influence.

TYLER SCOTT, 17
Baton Rouge Magnet High School

What do you like about poetry?
I like how [with] poetry you have the opportunity to speak the truth … Poetry gives us the space to do that.

What do you like about the piece you performed?
It’s about a TV show … and [the poem] pretty much shows how I see my family in that show in a way, pretty much drawing parallels between the two.

IMANI SUNDIATA, 18
Baton Rouge Magnet High School

What do you like about poetry?
I’ve come to like it because it’s a very expressive art form, and it’s something that everyone can get into and everyone can just be free. I think that’s the best [way] to describe it.

Tell us about your favorite poem you performed.
My favorite one would be my poem called “New Holiday,” because it’s about my dad … he passed when I was younger, and I think this is a way to remember him.

KALVIN MARQUIZ MORRIS, 16
Baton Rouge Magnet High School

What do you like about poetry?
The freedom of expression and being able to connect with people through sharing my experiences.

Tell us about the poem you were most excited about performing.
Right now, the poem that I’ve been really excited about performing is “Inkblot Test.” It’s the most new, and I feel like the most new poem is always your freshest and the most exciting to perform. You get to work out kinks of the performance and how people react to it. But, also for me, I’m really into it because I feel even though right now it’s still in the draft phase, it’s leaning toward saying things that I’ve never said before in poems clear-cut. So that’s interesting.

While we spoke to the youth poets at the Ebb & Flow Festival, these photos were taken during their performances at the All City Teen Poetry Slam finals April 8. At the finals, Smith, Sundiata and Morris earned spots on the 2017 Forward Arts All Stars slam team to compete at the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival in San Francisco in July. Scott received the first-ever Kaiya Smith Award for WordCrew Excellence and an all-expense-paid trip to the Brave New Voices festival.

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.