Class Description
This class will be hosted remotely! You will be able to participate in class via Zoom videoconference from wherever you’re most comfortable. All you’ll need is a laptop or a phone! About 15 minutes before your class is scheduled to begin, you'll receive an email from your instructor with a link to join the class meeting via Zoom–no need to download anything or sign up for Zoom in advance! If you have questions about remote learning, please feel free to reach out to [email protected] for more information.
Class Description: Slam poetry has grown into a venue for people of all ages to share their stories, their struggles, their love, and their hope. Through the course of this session we will be diving into the tools that make slam poetry such a unique and accessible art form. In this workshop, you'll start with a blank sheet of paper and by the end, you'll be ready to perform a brand new, crafted, and edited poem. You don’t need any previous experience with poetry of any kind. Writers will start with prompts that will allow them to bring their unique experiences and emotions to their writing. We will then look at forms and poetic tools that can help give shape to the ideas they’ve gathered, step deeper into craft tools with a peer editing process that will focus on strengthening what they’ve already written, and finally play with some core performance techniques. We’ll be learning from the work of poets such as Danez Smith, Anis Mojgani, Marjan Naderi, Ebony Stewart, Richard Siken, Sarah Kaye, and Melissa Lozada-Oliva. We all have stories inside of us, sometimes we just need to figure out the best way to share them.
Takeaways: By the end of the session, students will walk away with a brand new poem that they have edited and performed for the first time ever, along with resources to recreate the brainstorming, writing, and editing process for themselves in the future.
Who Should Register?
For writers ages 13 - 18 ONLY. Writing notebooks are available, but feel free to bring your own.
Remember, parents/guardians must also complete this permission form online before the start of the class. Otherwise, registrations could be voided and the cancellation policy will apply. If the student is 18, simply let us know at [email protected]
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.