Congratulations to the 2009 Worcester Youth Slam Team - Jeff Seigrist, Kate Richardson, Elyse Bianchet, Carolyn Mshooshian and Eddy Habib. They will take part in Brave New Voices from July 13-19th in Chicago.

The youth slam is on hiatus over the summer. We'll update the page once their schedule for the fall is worked out.

During 2008/2009 the Speakout! Youth Poetry Collective returned to a weekly open reading/slam format. During the first season back in 2003-2004, they ran a weekly readings & found that it really provided consistency & momentum that's been missing with the venue changes in the last couple years. Their hope was that a return to weekly status would help take the reading to the next level as a community.

For 2008-2009 Speakout! worked in association with the Clark University Slam Team to sponsor the Worcester Youth Slam. They held the readings on Saturday night at The Bistro located in the Higgins Student Center at Clark (950 Main Street Worcester, MA 01610). The reading ran from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

In their short history, they've gone from non-profit art gallery to a coffee shop & now they've taken the show on campus!!! Clark's had a strong poetry slam scene for the past several years, with some crossover between students there who've also competed on our youth slam teams. Organizer Alex Charalambides personally feels that Clark's central location, their history of community outreach and the general academic & cultural atmosphere found on a college campus will help to provide an amazing opportunity for us to create an inspiring & thriving background for our young poets to show off their stuff.

Please contact worcesteryouthslam2004@yahoo.com for more information.

The Youth Poetry Slam creates an opportunity for young writers to perform & share their poetry, while giving them a chance to represent Worcester at the Brave New Voices Festival in 2009.

Poetry Slam is the competitive art of performance poetry, where poets perform their original work, no props, musical accompaniment or animal acts, for randomly selected judges (picked from the audience) who will score their work based on content & performance. It's theater, it's fun, it's literature, it's community, it's a movement!!!