Sixteen Youth poets compete for slots on this year’s Grand Slam Championship team.
Slam Asheville Youth gears up for Grand Slam, the team selection which will send six poets to the Youth Grand Slam Championship. The selection event takes place on Tuesday, April 22, at 7 p.m, at NC Stage (15 Stage Ln., Asheville). Tickets are $10 for adults and $7 for students.
According to Slam Asheville Youth representatives, the group has already taken two teams of young poets to the National Championships. That event will be held this July, in Philadelphia. “Slam Asheville Youth has been running two monthly youth poetry slams for over two years now and audiences frequently top 100,” Heidi Freeman, Mel Kelley and Steve Shell said in a letter to Xpress. “Our Soulspeak series at New York Studios often features a theme and poets have used their words to raise awareness and money for several local organizations, most recently raising over $1000 for Manna Food Bank at our Food for Thought, Slam Against Hunger.”
Actually, the EVENT is The Grand Slam. The top six poets from this event will go on to participate in Brave New Voices, the largest youth poetry slam in the world. The slam at Brave New Voices is the International Youth Poetry Slam. Over 50 teams from around the world come to the festival every year since 2006. Asheville is currently ranked in the top six youth slam teams in the world. We lost to New York City by a single point in Semi-finals last year in Chicago. The two slam series that operated under the SAY banner in 2014 were: AVL/BNV at NC Stage Company and Asheville Soulspeak which operated out of NYS3 studios. We have run an entire competitive season starting in October and ending on April 22.