Young Chicago Authors & MassLEAP will join forces to bring you the professional development you need to get you and your team ready for the festival. The outline below includes a breakdown of the schedule to be co-taught by Peter Kahn, Jose Olivarez, Roger Bonair Agard; with special guests Novana Venerable & Tabitha Watson.

All workshops to be held at Grub Street
(160 Boylston St, Boston, MA)

Saturday, February 11th
1:00am – 3:00pm
Breakout 1: Using Spoken Word to Teach Writing: Immersion in pedagogy, teaching, spoken word and hip-hop poetry with a focus on composition

Breakout 2: The Art of the Group Piece & Performance: Immersion in performance and group pieces

3:00pm – 5:00pm
Round-Table Discussion: Immersion in building a spoken word club, building a spoken word culture in your school & building a year-round culture in your city. Please come prepared to participate in the dialogue!

5:00pm – 8:00pm
Saturday Night Showcase! FreeVerse! presents “I Think I _____ You!” a performance poetry showcase in collaboration with COOL + UnchARTed @ 126 Merrimack St. Come kick a piece and listen to Lowell’s young folks tear up the heart.

The organizers of the inaugural 2012 Louder than a Bomb Massachusetts (LTAB Mass) Festival have set up a new date, time and location for an optional pre-registration session for teachers and community activists who would like to learn more about the process for putting together a youth poetry slam team. There will be opportunities to ask questions, discuss the festival tournament rules and share best practices for working with youth poets. We would like to thank our friends at Grub Street Writing Institute for sharing their incredible conference space with us!

Saturday Jan 28th 6pm-8pm

Grub Street

160 Boylston St. (4th Floor) Boston, MA

Public Parking Garages Nearby, Train Accessible

Please RSVP with us at LTABmass@gmail.com

More about Grub Street:  www.grubstreet.org “Grub Street is one of the largest independent centers for creative writing in the United States. Our mission is to be an innovative, rigorous, and welcoming community for writers who together create their best work, find audience, and elevate the literary arts for all.

We accomplish this by offering the highest quality classes and services for writers at all stages of development, by educating writers through the entire writing process from inspiration to publication and promotion, by putting a premium on teaching excellence, by welcoming as many writers as possible through generous scholarships and free outreach programming, by creating fulfilling employment for writers, by connecting people and ideas through writing, and by empowering writers to fully embrace new opportunities ushered in by the digital age.”

Casey Rocheteau is running this month’s writing workshop for: teacher-poets, or just plain curious writers, and listeners of ALL ages, on November 19th.

The only hints I’ll give you to what this will be all about, is: displacement & a “holiday” setting. Also that it’ll probably find a way to be exactly what you did expect, and didn’t expect, all at the same time. No lie.

About Casey:

Casey Rocheteau doesn’t believe in the end of time, but is a historian from the future. She began performing poetry at Hampshire College, where she was one of the leaders of the Hampshire Slam Collective from 2004-2007, during which she was a member of the first Hampshire/Five College teams at the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational. She has continued to perform throughout the country, releasing the album Pump Your Concrete on the Whitehaus Family Record in 2008. She has attached four books onto the legs of carrier pigeons: Roguish Young Things (2006), Keelhaul (2007), and List of American Rituals (2008), 11:11 (2009) . Recently, she’s gathered up the stuttering syllables of American cities and formed a new album entitled Chiaroscurro. More recently, she’s written a book called Wild Child, filled with sex and heartbreak. Her next book, The Dozen is cooking in the maelstrom of the Age of Insecurity.

This event is open to the public, and is FREE.

It’ll be held upstairs at Rodney’s Bookstores in Central Square, Cambridge from 12pm-3pm on November 19th.

Bring others on in too to join in on this hootenanny.

(Also to bring more words like hootenanny into this space).

Got any other ideas/comments?
Send them along to: caclarke@suffolk.edu

Mass LEAP is the Massachusetts Literary Education and Performance Collective.

We’re a network of artists, educators, and students working together to create a vibrant youth poetry community in Greater Boston.

We work to connect teaching artists with schools and other organizations in order to create opportunities for the youth of the Commonwealth to experience, create, and perform poetry.

Our goals are to empower the voices of young people, foster creativity, promote literacy, and build community.

We offer:

• Writing workshops
• Open mics
• Poetry slams
• Adult development trainings for educators who want to incorporate spoken word into their curricula

Mass LEAP is sponsored by Mass Poetry.

Meaghan Ford is a Massachusetts transplant from Elizabeth, New Jersey where she learned the art of yelling eloquently.  Last year she earned her Masters in Creative Writing from Emerson College and recently has been qualifying in poetry slams in the Boston area.  She is a freelance writer and graphic designer and has been published in such magazines as The Legendary, Phantom Kangaroo, and The Scrambler.  Currently she is working on her first chapbook of poetry, a nonfiction book, and a screenplay for children with more puns than she’d like to admit.  When not being an adult she’s usually around the city enjoying the lack of a real winter and praying for snow so that she can go sledding.

Some years after escaping the clutches of Christian Fundamentalism (as a seminary student and Russia-bound missionary no less), Michael Monroe discovered Slam by being dragged to the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge for “some sort of poetry reading.” Boy, did he think it would suck. Boy, did it ever not suck. And some kind of spark plug lit off in his skull as he realized that being a writer and performer was just what he wanted to do – not fire spinning, jazz piano or juggling, all of which he’d already become quite proficient at. Now, instead of preaching a theology of oppression, Michael channels his love of words and performance to proclaim the heresy of just living life as a person without easy answers. The goal is to highlight the sometimes dark, and just as bright aspects of being human despite all the trouble we get into. He regularly features throughout New England (from bar to university), was the Development Director for the 2011 National Poetry Slam (lauded as the most successful to date), runs the infamous 365/365 Project (having completed the full challenge two years in a row), has released a chapbook and CD, and is a proud volunteer for the MassLEAP Collective, bringing the art of performance poetry to high school students throughout Massachusetts. Michael also majored in the highly focused field of Human Communication Psychology, which informs his passion for effectively conveying ideas to all kinds of people (read: he digs thinking pedagogically). More info can be located at michaeljmonroe.com or find him on Facebook. Also, he likes dogs and cats.

Mass LEAP Co-Founder & Chair of Visibility and Outreach

Jade Sylvan is a nationally-touring poet, songwriter, performer, and teaching artist. She has taught poetry writing and performance and lead workshops all over the country, and works as a writing teacher and teen mentor in Somerville, MA. Her first full-length collection of poetry was published in 2009 by NYC’s Spuyten Duyvil Press, and her work has appeared in Word Riot, Decomp, The Pedestal, Radius, the November 3rd Club, and OVS magazine. Her hip-hop side personality, Madame Psychosis, has a Zombie Apocalypse music video online, and she released her first album of original indie-folk music, Blood & Sand (Red Car Records) in 2011. She does a lot of other things. You can see some of them at www.jadesylvan.com.

Mass LEAP Co-Founder & Curriculum Development Co-Chair

“Regie, when you perform, you are supersonic and in the stratosphere, where you can see that the Earth
really is a ball, moist, blue-green. Regie, you sing and chant for all of us. Nobody gets left out.” -Kurt Vonnegut

Poet, songwriter, author, workshop facilitator, and educator Regie Gibson has performed, taught, and lectured at schools, universities, theaters and various other venues on two continents and in seven countries including Havana Cuba. Regie and his work appear in the New Line Cinema film love jones, based largely on events in his life. The poem entitled “Brother to the Night (A Blues for Nina)” appears on the movie soundtrack and is performed by the film’s star, Larenz Tate. Regie performed “Hey Nappyhead” in the film with world-renowned percussionist and composer Kahil El Zabar, composer of the score for The Lion King musical.

Regie has worked with: Gwendolyn Brooks, Roy Ayers, Fareed Haque, Kurt Vonnegut, David Amram, The Monks of the Drepong Gamong Monastery, members of the world famous AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), Mos Def, David Murray, Sterling Plumpp, Marc Smith, Mark Strand, Reg E. Gaines, Savion Glover, John Legend and many other artists in musical genres including World, Celtic, Jazz, Blues and, Salsa, and classical European.

Regie is a former National Poetry Slam Individual Champion, was selected one of Chicago Tribune’s Artist of the Year for Excellence for his poetry. He has co-judge the Chicago Sun-Times Poetry Competition with Marc Smith and Mark Strand, has been regularly featured on N. P. R. and has appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam.

Regie has toured with the Chicago Mask Ensemble, performing dramatic and poetic adaptations of common myths from around the world. He co-produced the play “The Mystery of Fire Bread” while performing in Europe with the Sharnier Theater in the cities of Hanover, Frankfurt, Berlin, and the Literature Haus in Hamburg, Germany. His original works of poetry have been dramatized and scored by classical flautist and Professor Janet Misurell-Mitchell and produced and directed by Eric Rosen for the Steppenwolf Theater’s Words on Fire production. In 1999 Regie performed for the award-winning Traffic Series at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater where he adapted the work of Kurt Vonnegut. Regie founded the Literarymusic Ensemble Neon JuJu: a literary and musical arts ensemble utilizing classic, contemporary and original literary text combined with Middle Eastern, Contemporary American and European classical music.

Regie is widely published in anthologies, magazines and journals such as The Iowa Review, Harvard Divinity Magazine, Poetry Magazine, Spoken Word Revolution (Source Books), The Good Men Project and several others. His full-length book of poetry Storms Beneath The Skin (EM Press) was published in 2001 and received the Golden Pen Award. In 2005 Regie was a featured on the PBS Arts magazine- Art Close-Up and was subsequently nominated for a Boston Grammy. In spring of 2008 Regie competed in and won the “Big Boat” international poetry competition held in Monfalcone, Italy. In 2010 Regie was invited to Milan, Italy to perform in a production of Poesia Presente’s Apocalissi Quotidiane (Everyday Apocalypses) in which he performed, in Italian, a version of Una Furtiva Lagrima (One Secret Tear) from Donizetti’s Opera L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love) at The Teatro Binario #7. In 2010-11 Regie received both the Massachusetts Cultural Council Award for Poetry and a Lexington Education Foundation Grant. Regie received his MFA in Poetry from New England College.

Mass LEAP Co-Founder & Curriculum Development Co-Chair

Amanda Torres is a fearless singer, writer, teacher, storyteller and performer who quickly cuts to the thundering heart of things. Torres taught for 8 years at Young Chicago Authors (YCA) after matriculating through the program as a youth. Since then, she has performed and traveled extensively across the US and abroad. As a member of the Chicago team that showcased the first youth poetry slam in London, she not only performed but was a part of the teaching and facilitating staff leading workshops in the schools. She has performed and taught in numerous elementary & high schools, libraries and community organizations in Chicago and across the US. In Post Katrina, Louisiana, Amanda led a summer poetry workshop series that included intense mentorship of youth living in low income communities. She founded the first Youth Advisory Council at YCA and co-founded L@s Eloter@s, a Latino writing teachers collective in Chicago. Since arriving in Massachusetts, she has become co-founder of the Mass LEAP Collective (Literary Education and Performance) and serves as co-chair of the Mass LEAP Teacher Development Committee. She is also currently teaching Spoken Word at Books of Hope, an arts organization based out of the Mystic Housing Projects of Somerville, as well as creative writing classes for Haggerty Elementary in Cambridge.

Mass LEAP Co-Founder & Continuing Events Co-Chair

A ten year veteran of the National Poetry Slam Movement. Founder and Executive Director of the Worcester Youth Poetry Slam (est. 2003), an independent program, responsible for mentoring, coaching, organizing and chaperoning teen writers to the Annual Brave New Voices International Youth Festival. A teaching artist who’s presented spoken word poetry to schools throughout Massachusetts, including residencies for YOU Inc. (Worcester) and Sarah Gibbons Middle School in Westborough. He’s recently been awarded a 2011 Worcester Arts Council Fellowship Grant.
Find him at www.hairylamb.com or www.worcesteryouthslam.com