Slam poets get emotional: LHS Slam Poetry Team gives it their all
Lincoln High Slam Poetry team and editors (Top right to left) Sklar Zastrow (fan), Callie McCright, Liam McChristian, Jack Buchanan, Alex Titsworth, Aaron Sams, Mr. Derrick Goss (Middle row) Lydia Bartek, Cora Holt, Cassidy Whitney-Zucco, Shannon Hicks, Ms. Hailey Heminway, Kea Riley, (Bottom row) Heather Barnes, Peyton Davis, Miss Deborah McGinn, Bailey Larson, Joanna Calel, Maya Jack, Lexxi Swanson, (Not Pictured) Helen Newell, Erica Leon, Kelly Broad, Katherine Lester, Karina Hinkley, Anna Anderson, Jacey Skoda, Nathan Versaw. Photo by Bradyn Berlie
By Ahmed Naser – Feature –
“I was angry. And I didn’t know why and I’m still angry and I don’t know why. It felt like I was crying re, my pupils like sun spots. I was angry that you left but there was no one left to be angry at. It’s like I stared you into oblivion.”
This is a section from Jack Buchanan’s new poem “Madonna” that he read at the Louder Than A Bomb Great Plains Individual finals this year.
Photo courtesy of Deborah McGinn
Buchanan, a junior who is a part of The Slam Poetry Team here at LHS, went on to Louder Than A Bomb Great Plains Slam Poetry Individual nals at UNL on April 22, 2017. Buchanan, who was representing LHS at the nals, read two poems, one of which was a new poem that was about his late mother’s battle with cancer and her passing in his 9th grade year. Buchanan passed the prelimi- nary bout with ease. “In my preliminary bout I read a poem that I had just written.It was new, I read it ne,” Buchanan said.
As Buchanan advanced into the next bout, he forgot a few lines as he was presenting his poem “Madonna” which was about his late mother. “I got to the nal and I dropped half way through,” Buchanan said. “It happens, nerves, all sorts of things. It was new.”
Deborah McGinn, an English teacher and Slam Poetry coach at Lincoln High, had different thoughts on his poem and presenta- tion. “That piece was absolutely stunning,” McGinn said. “it was beautiful, and it was so well written. And you know he got emo- tional, it was honest, it was passionate.”
Buchanan ended up not having a high enough score to make it to the overall final, but he still did very well considering that 0.1 point separated him from the top three schools. McGinn introduced slam poetry to LHS in the late 1990s. McGinn and Sarah Thomas from East High School combined their forces to create a slam poetry like event.
“We put our creative minds together, and we held poetry festivals between East High and Lincoln High twice a year.” There would be small poetry festivals between Lincoln High and East High where each semester one school would come over and have a gathering where students would meet each other and compete. This went on all the way till 2011.
In 2011, McGinn was invited to Louder Than a Bomb Great Plains in Omaha which is the biggest youth poetry event in the Midwest. McGinn attended the event and that is when she fell in love with the organization with what she was seeing and hearing. Right then she knew that LHS had to be apart of it.
“It was the wildest, most beautiful, powerful thing to illuminate the power of youth and their writing and their talents because so many people don’t understand how valuable students are, and how talented students are in writing. They tend to think that we can do less and I knew that Lincoln High had to have this program,” McGinn said.
Now in 2017, there are over 32 schools and organizations that participate in Louder Than a Bomb and it is continuing to spread all over Nebraska.
If you would like to be a part of slam poetry team you can try out at the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year. They will make sound announcements to meet and try out it a certain room. McGinn and the slam poetry team would also like to thank their donors that help fund their team.
“We would also want to thank the Champions fund and Mark Larson our principal. I don’t get paid for doing this and we don’t have funding so they donated $1,000 to us and Wayne’s Body Shop found out about Lincoln High’s slam poetry by attending and they fell in love with it and so they donated $1,500. It’s $600 to take a bus to Omaha and back, so we are so grateful for those people for supporting us just a little bit nancially as well.”
