Minnesota’s Youth Poetry Festival returns, with even more schools and poets. Nearly 20 teams from across the Twin Cities come together, including Washburn, Southwest, Brooklyn Center, Fair School, Community Peace Academy, Minnesota Science School, Marcy Open School, Barton, and more. See below for FAQs about the event. For more information, email sha.mnswa@gmail.com.

April 6, 2013

Minneapolis Central Library
300 Nicollet Mall
Downtown Minneapolis
All Events Free

10:30 – 4:30pm – Workshops, Dance Cyphers, Open Mics, and more

11:00am – 4:00pm – Middle School Prelims
11:00am – 4:00pm – High School Prelims

Music Box Theatre
1407 Nicollett Avenue
Downtown Minneapolis
$2 Donation

6:00pm – Middle School Finals
7:30pm – High School Finals

Say Word! Youth Poetry Festival is a one day youth spoken word event celebrating the youth poets of Minnesota, with sidewalk dance ciphers, a non-competitive open mic, workshops, networking, guest performances and a marathon of slam competitions. Slam teams feature middle school and high school youth, however the slams are also open to any individual youth poet, of middle school or high school age between 13-18 years old, can create a independent team of 4-6 poets to participate in the festival, whether they are enrolled in school, part of an after school program or just youth in the community. Teams will compete in a series of slams with the four remaining teams competing in the Finals; there will be a Middle School Final and a High School Final. There is limited space in the workshops; please arrive early to sign up. The community at large is invited to come witness, participate and support the youth. Poetry will be all-age appropriate.

MN Spoken Word Association is one of the premier spoken word organizations in the country. Founded by spoken word artists, it has worked to help build the spoken word community and to elevate the art form through its mission, programming, and education programs on the tradition. Plan-It Hennepin’s mission is to recreate Hennepin Avenue into a walkable and unified cultural corridor stretching from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden to the Mississippi Riverfront. This is a one-year creative place making project to envision a more connected and lively future for Hennepin Avenue from the Mississippi River to the Walker Art Center.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: Sha Cage sha.mnswa@gmail.com

Media Advisory
2 April 2012

Annual Say Word! Youth Poetry Festival

The festival features 16 teams and reaches more than 200 Minnesota youth, and also includes dance ciphers, workshops, guest hosts, spotlight performances around this year’s theme ‘The Exchange’. This is the second year of the festival, which is anchored in a partnership with Plan-It-Hennepin, whose mission is to recreate Hennepin Avenue into a walkable and unified cultural corridor. Say Word! encourages poets to think creatively about the theme ‘The Exchange’ as it relates to Hennepin Avenue, and Minneapolis as a whole. For the festival, poets between the ages of 12 and 18 form teams of 4-8 members, and compete in a series of slams for the title of the 2012 Say Word! Champions. Slams are competitions of three-minute poems scored by a panel of judges with no musical instruments or accompaniment, and instead allow language, theme, style and performance to take center stage.

Some of the preliminary competitions, along with workshops, will also be held at the historic Cowles Center in downtown Minneapolis during the day on April 21, 2012. Tickets to preliminaries can also be reserved online. Slams are known to be Olympic style poetry competitions, but the MN Spoken Word Association (MNSWA) takes the focus off the competition, creating an atmosphere of celebration and puts the emphasis on the poetry, writing and literacy as empowerment.

MN Spoken Word Association is one of the premier spoken word organizations in the country. Founded by spoken word artists, it has worked to help build the spoken word community and to elevate the art form through its mission, programming, and education programs on the tradition. Plan-It Hennepin’s mission is to recreate Hennepin Avenue into a walkable and unified cultural corridor stretching from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden to the Mississippi Riverfront. This is a one-year creative place making project to envision a more connected and lively future for Hennepin Avenue from the Mississippi River to the Walker Art Center.