Calling all poets! Spit fire on the mic during the Free Minds, Free People Youth Poetry Slam on Saturday evening. The slam will feature teams from Houston and Austin. We are also inviting other youth conference participants to sign up to be a part of a pick up team that will compete as part of the slam. We will have a sign up for the slam at the conference.

Meet the Austin team:

The Texas Youth Word Collective (TYWC) is a nonprofit youth literacy program which  encourages middle school and high school students’ interest in writing through providing venues and incentives to participate in youth poetry slams. Since 2003 TYWC has taken six teams of youth poets to the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival (Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, San Jose, and Washington, D.C.).  During that six year span the Austin team has made the final stage once, and placed 5th one year (2004) and 6th another (2007). The Austin youth slam teams have a long, respected reputation for bringing strong, moving poetry and performances to this annual international event. The 2009 team continues that tradition with an all-female contingent that is both fierce, fiery, and intellectually intense. The Free Minds, Free People conference can look forward to witnessing many powerful, meaningful  spoken word pieces consistent with the conference's purpose and sure to provoke thought and discussion. 

Meet the Houston team:

The Houston Metaphor youth poetry slam team will be led by its coach, Bean Emanuelee, an exceptional Houston spoken word artist. The team is part of Meta-FOUR Houston, a nonprofit art center dedicated to presenting new visual, performing and literary arts, uses spoken-word poetry to encourage self-expression, literacy and civic involvement among Houston’s youth population.

Judges will be chosen at random from the audience scoring each poem Olympic style (0.0 to 10.0). The rest of the audience will be encouraged to influence the judges by expressing their pleasure or displeasure with the judges scores and, under all circumstances, supporting the poets. And we will have a dj to rock the house.