There won’t be any dusting off of tomes or reciting of iambic pentameter at Victorious Voices, the third annual high-school poetry slam championships.
Instead, teams of students from six Greater Victoria high schools will perform spoken-word poems for a panel of judges including mayor Dean Fortin and poet laureate Janet Rogers. The performances will be scored and one school will be crowned the high-school slam champions.
In the past, the high-school slam championship finals have been held at Reynolds High School, but this year they’ve moved downtown.
“For the last two years it’s been the most inspiring night of my entire year,” says program director and spoken word poet Jeremy Loveday. “We want the public to see how amazing this is, so I’m not the only one who’s stealing all this inspiration.”
In three short years, high-school slam teams have sprung into existence at Esquimalt, Glenlyon-Norfolk, Pearson College, SJ Willis, Spectrum, and Reynolds (the reigning champions).
Loveday says high-school students are drawn to spoken-word poetry because they can write not for their teachers, but for themselves.
“This is really something they feel ownership of, and I really think it instills a lasting love of poetry, and also of the power that comes with speaking the truth,” he says.
Some adults may be skeptical about the quality of teenagers’ poems. But Loveday believes that teens’ and adults’ poems aren’t so different.
“Often the most effective poems that teenagers do are when they find the universality in the problems that they’re facing as a teenager,” he says. “The honesty and purity and rawness are there, but these poets have honed their craft at a very young age.”
Spoken-word poetry doesn’t end after students have graduated from high school. Many students who went through a high-school poetry-slam program have gone on to compete at Vic Slam. Victorious Voices’ alumni of honour, Keenan Proud, even made the Vic Slam team last year.
“Making the Vic Slam team was a huge surprise,” says Proud, who graduated from Oak Bay High School two years ago and is now the volunteer coordinator for the Tongues of Fire poetry night. “I’d been slamming for less than a year. It was one of the best experiences, for sure. It’s a great community. We love new blood so much that you’re in the fold so quickly.”
The high-school slam championships will consist of semifinals on April 2, in which all of the teams will compete, and the April 4 finals, where the top four teams will fight it out for first place.
Loveday is determined to make the event fun: “It’s going to be a high-energy, rocking good time, and I think everyone’s going to be inspired.”
Victorious Voices
Semi-finals April 2, finals April 4, 7 pm, $5
Victoria Event Centre
litlive.ca/event/430