Louder Than A Bomb Slams To A Close

By Betsy Mikel in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 9, 2011 9:30PM

While we’ve been cursing the not-quite-end of winter and hanging on the every last word of both fake and real Rahm Emanuels, 650 teens across Chicago have been rhyming, rapping, reciting and representing, hoping to secure an individual or team spot in the Louder Than a Bomb final slams. With the individual finals tonight and the team finals on Saturday, the festival is coming to a climactic end, and there’s a lot at stake. Especially when the judges include Rhymefest and the executive director of Jane Addams Hull House.

LTAB, presented by Young Chicago Authors, is a teen poetry slam that aims to bring Chicago’s youth together across racial, gang and social-economic lines. “For three minutes at a time the students speak about their lives,” said LTAB artistic director and co-founder Kevin Coval. “For the other eighty-seven minutes, they are listening to the lives and stories and dreams of others. Kids that don't look like them and come from a different neighborhood. In listening, the city shrinks." Festival alumni also boast an 85 percent high school graduation rate and there have been zero incidents of violence since the festival’s inception in 2000.

Last year we saw the Louder Than a Bomb documentary, which followed students in the 2008 competition. This year we saw To Be Heard, a documentary about teen slam poets in the Bronx. Both these films drive home the point that slam poetry can help save a lot of these students’ lives. Having a creative outlet and a support system for their thoughts, fears and feelings can help motivate them to succeed, like graduating high school and heading to college. These students have pieces that can shock and awe via video; their poems and stories are even more powerful in person.

Louder Than a Bomb Individual Poet Finals, tonight at 7p.m., Victory Gardens Biograph Theater (2433 N. Lincoln Ave.), $10 adults/$5 students

Louder Than a Bomb Team Finals, Saturday, March 12 at 6p.m., The Vic Theater (3145 N. Sheffield Ave.), $20 adults/$10 students