The largest of its kind in the world, Louder Than a Bomb (LTAB) is the city’s rapidly-growing teen poetry festival. Aiming to bring teens together across racial, gang, and socio-economic lines, LTAB is a friendly competition that emphasizes self-expression and community via poetry, oral story-telling, and hip-hop spoken word.

As author and LTAB co-founder and artistic director Kevin Coval describes, “For three minutes at a time the students speak about their lives. For the other eighty-seven minutes, they are listening to the lives and stories and dreams of others. Kids that don’t look like them and come from a different neighborhood. In listening, the city shrinks.”

Presented here is the FINAL ROUND OF COMPETITION, featuring the four team finalists: Northside College Prep, Kuumba Lynx, TEAM Englewood, and Maine East.  Performing in a series of rounds, both individual poets representing these teams as well as a group of 4 poems performing a team piece are included, with scores given each round and the winning team sent on to represent Chicago in the national competition. 

In addition to this team competition, six individual poets also advanced to the Finals: Raymond Abercrombie, Danny B., Malcom “Mr. Diversity” London, Hanna Telander, Fatimah Warner, and Brendan J.  They compete alongside the other performing poets to win a place on the Chicago All-Stars, who perform throughout the year.

WINNERS - LTAB HS Indy Slam:
6th (tie): Benj (Northside)
6th (tie): Melana (TEAM Englewood)
6th (tie): Danny B (Mather)
5th: Keith (TEAM Englewood)
4th: Mr. Diversity (Lincoln Park)
3rd: Fatimah (YOU Media)
2nd: Dana (Maine East)
1st: Brendan (Morgan Park)!!!

WINNERS - LTAB Team Slam:
4th: TEAM Englewood
3rd: Northside College Prep
2nd: Maine East
1st: Kuumba Lynx!!!

Congratulations to all winners and participants.

Louder Than a Bomb is a program of Young Chicago Authors.  Based on alumni surveys, LTAB boasts an 85% high school graduation rate, and most notably “within a year of national discussion on youth violence” has had zero incidents of violence in it’s 10 years of working with students from across the city. Traditionally operating outside of regular school programming, LTAB brings together poetry teams that are often founded by students and coached pro-bono by teachers, for the annual three week competition each Spring.

Click here to listen and download to the Chicago Public Radio studio recordings of all 2010 Finalists!

Recorded Saturday, March 06, 2010 at The Vic Theatre