Urban Word

I had the wonderful opportunity of attending the Preemptive Education's Urban Word poetry slam. What I enjoyed most about the poems was the fact that they were young adults and teenagers who had used the English language to express feelings and play on words. My goal in attending was to see how I can use different methods of expression that are not generally used in the classroom setting today. Many of the students who performed became involved in slam poetry by chance and not because it was part of any curriculum in their school.
What I found most interesting was that, slam poetry gave these students the medium to fully express something that was missing in their lives. This urban fire allowed them to fully convey their inner thoughts about misfortunes going on in their neighborhood/nationally as well as personal issues that plagued their minds.
I definitely loved the powerful poems called Queens and Switch which talked about a girl from Queen who felt she was a queen and Switch was about gay men violently killed because they walked and talked with a switch. Like the poet said, he felt compelled to tell the story and he feels like a vessel in which he is used to reach the masses in his freedom of expression. I thanked him for his expression and wished I had more courage to lay out what really matters to the youths I work with today in such a thought provoking manner.