The Room Is on Fire

The History, Pedagogy, and Practice of Youth Spoken Word Poetry

Susan Weinstein

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781438470221, 9781438470238
• eBook ISBN: 9781438470245
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Research in Education

The Room Is on Fire offers an overview of youth spoken word poetry's history, its practitioners, participants, and practices. Susan Weinstein explores its grounding in earlier literary/performance/educational traditions and discusses its particular challenges. In order to analyze these issues, the story of how youth spoken word poetry developed as a field is told through the voices of those involved. Interviewees include the people who organized the first youth poetry slam festivals, the founders of central youth spoken word organizations, and a selection of young people who have participated in their local programs and in regional and national events over the last two decades. Narratives about individual and communal efforts and experiences are supported by analyses of full-text poems by youth poets and by reference to contemporary scholarship in performance studies, critical youth studies, and new literacy studies. Blending history and theory with practical descriptions of how spoken word poetry is taught and how to produce spoken word events, the book will appeal to researchers, teacher educators, and K–12 teachers.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One Who’s Who
• Two Pedagogy and Practices
• Three A Brief History of the Field
• Four What Is Spoken Word Poetry and Where Did It Come From?
• Five The Role of Slam
• Six Youth Spoken Word Poetry Enters Its Third Decade
• In Memory of Those We Have Lost
• Appendix A Brave New Voices Festivals by Year
• Appendix B Youth Spoken Word Poetry Organizations by State and Country
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Back Cover