WS Chronicle

The participants in the summer camp at W.R. Anderson participated in the Rhythm and Rhyme Youth Poetry Slam for the fourth year. The poetry slam took place on Thursday, July 18, at the center, with over 60 kids across three age groups participating in the event.

The theme for this year’s event was Love, Peace and Soul, based on the television show Soul Train.  To pay homage to the show, the campers performed rehearsed dance routines prior to the show.

The young poets put in a lot of work preparing for the poetry slam, said Betty Wallace, event coordinator. Wallace praised the young people for their tremendous effort this year.

“What we did differently this year is we started a little bit earlier, we started in April, because some of the kids attend the center during the school year and they were more advanced for the summer,” said Wallace. “We also had the parents a little more involved this year, by giving them an outline of things they had to follow in order to get the kids prepared.

“We also gave them a link for things about the Soul Train era to look at. We then gave them helpful words to use in their poems to help describe what they were talking about.”

To help give the kids an understanding of the theme, Wallace showed them clips of the Soul Train show and discussed how the world has evolved since the 1970s.

“We made a comparison between what was happening then to what is going on now in this particular generation,” she continued.  “We found out a lot of the songs dealt with love, war and peace and those kinds of things.

“We are still dealing with a lot of issues we were dealing with during that era and the kids are more aware of it, so they had an opportunity to share their ideas. It all started from a couple of clips on YouTube and then they integrated their ideas within their writing.”

The winners from the three age groups were: Harmony Bowman (group 1), Addison Barnes (group 2) and Chloe Moore (group 3). Moore has been a winner in previous years of the poetry slam. Wallace had high praise for the intense research and preparation Moore put into this year’s poem.

“Chloe has experience under her belt and she would often come to me for private coaching,” Wallace said.  “Every day we would kind of work on her piece. She spent a lot of time wanting a lot more coaching by coming to me and asking me how she could enhance her writing.”

According to Wallace, the young poets had a lot of competition between themselves leading up to the poetry slam. She said they would practice with one another to help sharpen their skills.

Wallace said it was a group effort putting together the poetry slam. She was very pleased with the performance and turnout at the center. “Everyone did their part as far as making sure that we were on point and that the people got the vision of what we were trying to talk about,” said Wallace.

Moving forward, Wallace would love to expand the poetry slam to include other centers. She feels if they can include more kids, it will expand their summer experience beyond the norm.