For the second summer in a row, Young Chicago Authors sponsored Check the Method : A Summer Spoken Word Camp led by Kevin Coval. The camp is graciously co-sponsored and held at the historic Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, and is open to writers age 15-21.  The camp’s focus is on the writer in community and city, a metaphoric imaging of the commitment to place and people that Jane Addams herself lead in her lifetime and legacy.  

This year’s camp brought dozens of young writers from all over the city and suburbs together to explore techniques and writing practice, culminating in a week end reading and performance. Participating poets included (in no particular order): Nat Iosbaker, Brian Yoo, Dominic Giafaolenne, Stephanie Rose Perez, John-Carlo Arias, Ben Spacapan, Adam Gottlieb, Lauren Whitehead (teacher), Gahl Liberzo, Nate Marshall, Arthur Gutnov, Paula Dyanova, Chantel ‘Pink’ Hampton, Dianna Harris, Chris Kammerer, Fiona, Limon Manuel (teacher), Lamar ‘Jus Love’ Jordan, Robbie Q. Telfer (teacher) and Mr. Kevin Coval himself.

Kevin Coval  is the author of Slingshots (A Hip-Hop Poetica) which was named Book of the Year-finalist by The American Library Association. Coval’s writing has appeared in The Spoken Word Revolution and The Spoken Word Revolution: Redux, to name a few, and can be heard regularly on Chicago Public Radio, where he is resident poet and hip-hop correspondent. Co-Founder of Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Teen Poetry Festival, the largest youth poetry festival in the world, Coval is a professor at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago and for over ten years has been teaching hip-hop poetics in high schools and colleges around the country.  

Please note: This reading contains sexually explicit language.

Recorded Friday, July 13, 2007 at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.