Meet The Artists Through Their Spoken Words at Lincoln Center

Search Amazon.com for teaching poetry to middle schoolYesterday began with a challenging commute for me. The traffic on the Turnpike was so bad that the Port of NY Authority was actually offering apologies for the delays in the bus terminal when I arrived. I was rushing to Lincoln Center for a school program called Meet the Artists.

Middle School is often a challenging age group, with its mix of growth spurts and interests. I say this because it’s sometimes a rough room even for the best performers. So the fact that Cecilia Rubino’s
Poetry Slam 102: Verbal Velocity players could generate enough excitement to get the whole room of students to raise their pencils in the air and write, and then, on the big stage of The Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, compete to volunteer to read aloud…Well! What teacher doesn’t dream of that kind of class participation? This program in the Meet the Artists Series delivers.

Their secret is an effective mix of accoustic cool, sound effects, music, and the keepin'-it-real poetry of Darian Dauchan, Erik "the advocate of wordz" Maldonado, and Shanelle Gabriel, who spit rhymes so compellingly you've just got to write when they tell you to. The show opens with the roar of a race car and does not quit humming until the end after the students applaud and cheer. Creative writing is sometimes a scary curriculum area, but this program goes a long way toward making the experience open and welcoming for everyone. While poetry slam is a fast-paced competitive sport with points and judging for the slam actors' stage efforts, they emphasize repeatedly that the students should applaud the poet not the scores. This duality works well to encourage the shy while offering some juiced literary combat for the extrovert.

Darian, Erik, and Shanelle wear many hats in this performance, alternately hosting a round of competition--with Darian donning a top hat and affecting a British accent, Shanelle, the guise of Sister Yvonne on her way to church, and Erik, the outfit of Ricky Rock 'n Roll--then spitting rhymes as the slam experts they are. The first round included puzzle poems about unnamed objects--Ink, from Erik, A Fast-Food Favorite, served up by Shanelle, and the Iphone, emceed by Darian. During the Breakdown moment, the poets explained personification--"I feel so personified"--and gave the audience 3 minutes to write to music. Rubino and the emcees circulated to help anyone who was stuck. There were volunteers aplenty, and one student came up on crutches to share his piece on “headphones.” He was generously rewarded with urban cool, and the audience loved how “dope” it was.

Round two featured highly personal tributes to favorite music—Darian to Coltrane’s sax, the Church of St. Hipness, Eric, to Salsa, el cantata, yo soy Boricua, and Shanelle brought down the house with her paean to Hiphop, “writing from the heart, spit trith…the power is ours!”  Erik provided a comic interlude by attempting an 8-minute air guitar tribute to Led Zeppelin, but he was interrupted for the second Breakdown, where this program’s high-falutin’ curriculum moment concerned the  Ekphrastic poem, which they quickly brought down to earth, Say wha? Hint: It’s inspired by art. This writing sequence figured a brainstorming freewrite accompanied by Lady Gaga for musical inspiration. Highly energizing.

Students were instructed to let this piece “marinate” and work on it another time, and Shanelle arrived as Sister Yvonne  to introduce a particularly poignant segment where the narrative poems concerned highly personal bittersweet moments about the girl Erik teased, the love Darian wanted to reach out for, and Shanelle’s struggle to understand and please her foster mother, to “Be the kind of woman you wished I’d be.” The last Breakdown encouraged students to affirm themselves through their words, and the students quickly composed sentences of their own, which many read aloud with great pride: “Hold your  ground because life is coming.”

Shanelle was the ultimate slam winner, but, as they say, "the point is not the points." At the end of the show, Heather from Lincoln Center told the students they could donate their poems to Lincoln Center. My turn to be amazed and a little jealous. What a great thing for the students and the arts! Cecilia Rubino's amazing slam poets make it look so easy. Behind this performance lurks a lot of energy and talent. If you are a teacher who wants to attend it, know that your students will go home inspired, and you can pick up a few tricks about turning that freewrite into a piece of cake. Word.