Poetry Slam: 20 years of youth finding their voice

In the back room of the bookshop, there’s nowhere left to sit, barely a place to stand. The air is humid with anticipation and perspiration. The first poet steps up to the mike, hands quivering, to recite free verse on loneliness and lost friendship. When he blanks out halfway, friends and family snap their fingers in the beatnik gesture of encouragement.

But this is not 1955, and Allen Ginsberg isn’t unleashing “Howl” at Six Gallery. It’s 2016, and the poets are Bay Area teens who’ve jammed into 826 Valencia for a preliminary round of the 20th annual Youth Speaks Poetry Slam.

Unlike in Ginsberg’s era, there is no censorship and no risk of arrest, and background beats are delivered not on bongos but by DJ Treat-U-Nice. Some of these poets may even advance to the semifinals starting Friday, March 25, and the Grand Slam final at Davies Symphony Hall on April 16, where they’ll recite in front of 3,000 raucous supporters.

“We’ve always taken our slams as parties,” says James Kass, “even if the topics the kids are writing about are really serious.” Kass, 47, founded Youth Speaks in 1996, while he was getting his master’s degree in creative writing at San Francisco State. Hoping to inspire more students of color to study writing, he launched a phenomenon — nationwide, nearly 250,000 teens, ages 13-19, participated last year.

Among Youth Speaks’ alumni are West Oakland poet and playwright Chinaka Hodge, who is developing a TV series with “Creed” and “Fruitvale Station” writer-director Ryan Coogler, and her close friend Daveed Diggs, who stars on Broadway in the hip-hop musical “Hamilton.” “Daveed would win every time,” Hodge says of their Berkeley High slams. “But it was never really about that. It was always about the community, and having a place where I could be heard and seen.”

A former teacher, Kass grasped the alienation of mid-’90s teens. “They were being mis-portrayed in the media, and particularly kids of color were being vilified,” he recalls. “They didn’t have a place to come together across community lines, and they didn’t have any adults nurturing their writing.”

He thought poetry could be a good outlet for them, as it had been for him. “It allowed me to get to know myself,” says the self-described hip-hop kid who wrote and DJ-ed with friends in New York. “It also taught us how to listen. Like, ‘Oh, you’re fresh too! I want to be fresher than you, and you’re going to be fresher than me.’ It creates this collaborative competition where we’re all trying to be our best selves.”

Fifty kids did the first slam at the old Intersection for the Arts on Valencia, covered in The Chronicle. “Kids started coming from all over,” Kass says. They keep coming — from Lafayette, from Richmond, from the Sunset — because Youth Speaks offers a safe place to express themselves through poetry, plays and fiction, plus guidance that can be life-altering.

Slams are competitive, with winning poets advancing to local semifinals and final rounds, and then to the Brave New Voices national final. But the vibe is supportive, scoring is anonymous and the audience boos low marks and cheers high ones. “Everybody knows it’s ridiculous to put a number on a poem,” says Kass, “so we make fun of it as it’s happening.”

In their poems, the teens speak passionately about identity, justice, sexuality, drugs. They aim sharp metaphors at questionable authorities — that night at 826 Valencia, more than one person noted that police and protesters were outside, clashing over the police shooting of Amilcar Perez-Lopez.

The poets also discover their own power. “At home, my perspective didn’t necessarily matter,” says Brandon Yip, 18, a three-year participant and UC Berkeley freshman. But at slams, he says, “people are inclined to listen because you have the mike.”

Marc Bamuthi Joseph agrees. Now Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ chief of programs and pedagogy, he was Youth Speaks’ founding program director and Hodge’s mentor. “We’re cultivating an aspect of our society that is underutilized,” he says. “The slam is not just an exercise in young people speaking out, it’s an exercise for the rest of us to listen and, hopefully, grow.”

Youth Speaks has brought unique opportunities to Kass, too. In 2009 he curated the inaugural White House Poetry Jam, where Barack and Michelle Obama heard Lin-Manuel Miranda share the first song he wrote for “Hamilton.” “We’ve allowed young people to redefine for themselves what poetry is,” says Kass, “and I think Lin is doing the same thing with theater.”

From the Mission to the White House — 20 years on, Kass describes Youth Speaks’ growth as, simply, “crazy.” But he’s still making good on his pitch to that first group of teenage poets. “Come get down with us,” he told them, “and we promise to create opportunities for young people to have a voice on their own terms.”

Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam Semifinals: 7 p.m. Friday, March 25, and April 1. Impact Hub Oakland, 2323 Broadway, Oakland, 1 p.m. Saturday, March 26, and April 2. Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission St., S.F. Free. www.youthspeaks. org.

Youth Speaks Teen Grand Slam Final: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 16. Davies Symphony Hall, Grove Street and Van Ness Avenue, S.F. Free. www.youthspeaks.org.

Videos and audio

Readers and viewers of Youth Speaks should be cautioned that controversial content and strong language are to be expected.

For a reading of a poem by Misha Kurita-Ditz, go to http://bit.ly/1WlSNWG

See previous years’ final rounds on the Youth Speaks YouTube page: www.youtube.com/user/YOUTHSPEAKS

Learn about Russell Simmons’ Brave New Voices HBO series: www.hbo.com/russell-simmons-presents-brave-new-voices

Hear Allen Ginsberg read “Howl”: www<DP>.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGoY9gom50