Oak Forest HS Students Entertain Slam Poetry Creator Marc Kelly Smith

Oak Forest High School students in Ms. Nicole Kavouris’ American Literature classes immersed themselves in poetry, when Poetry Slam Movement Founder Mr. Marc Kelly Smith visited with the classes recently.

Mr. Smith is highly in demand as a speaker to talk about the Poetry Slam Movement that he founded at the Green Mill Tavern in Chicago.  There, Smith cultivated poets willing to perform their poetry pieces in front of a live audience.

Luckily, Mrs. Kavouris’s American Literature class has Smith’s great-nephew Josh Balinao.  When the class studied the transcendental poets, he said that his uncle, Mr. Smith, was a transcendental poet and put Kavouris in touch with him.  Students were delighted to experience Smith’s poetry in a real and visceral way.

Smith talked about how the academic world views Slam Poetry.  They view it as “just a little entertainment, but it is not that way,” he said.  Slam Poetry draws the listener in and then socks them with the heart of the poem and leaves a listener with things to think about because during a performance, a poet can engage and entertain the audience, and then move them and try to change their hearts and souls.  “This is why we value artists so highly,” he said.

Smith concentrated a majority of his presentation on learning how to perform Slam Poetry, encouraging students that performing and speaking in front of an audience is something that they can do.  He extolled the virtues of different types of delivery, from loud to soft, to slow and fast.

Two students performed a Slam Poetry piece for the combined student audience.  Luke Howard performed his original piece, called “Atlas.”  Izzy Oboza also performed her original piece titled “Princess.”   Smith worked with both students on their poems, having them imagine that they were someone different than themselves.  “When we give ourselves permission to be someone other then ourselves, the poems [often] work better,” Smith said.  He went on to share that he was too shy in his youth to do it, but broke out of his shell as he got older and exploded onto the poetry scene.