On March 12, 2024, the Coral Spring High School Cadence Poetry Club completed the preliminary bout in this year’s Louder Than a Bomb (LTAB) poetry competition and succeeded in the LTABFLA semi-finals taking place on April 6th.
What is Louder Than a Bomb?
LTAB is the largest youth poetry festival in the world. Two Chicago poets created it in 2001 because they wanted the youth to have a safe place to express themselves through their poetry.
Since being founded, LTAB has spread to thirteen cities across the United States. youngchicagoauthors.org states “LTAB is an annual event hosting over 500 youth poets for 5 weeks of Olympic-style poetry bouts, workshops, and special events. Students rep [sic] schools and community groups all throughout the Chicago area. They perform original solo and group poems in a tournament-style competition. Louder Than a Bomb is currently hosted in over 13 other cities across the U.S. by partner organizations.”
How does the Louder Than a Bomb competition work?
The schools competing will have four individual poets perform and one group piece with four members. There are two preliminary bouts of four competing teams, and the top sixteen scored pieces move on to the semi-finals. Then, the four highest-scoring performances from the semi-finals make it to the finals.
When performing, the poets will be judged on a scale from 0.0 (lowest) to 10.0 (highest). Afterward, the highest and lowest scores will be dropped, and the three middle scores will be combined to get the final score, with the highest possible score being 30.
Our competitors
For our solo performers, we had Carolina Gonzalez, Hailey Campagna, Zelica-Krist Grieves, Skylar Reed, and Juliana Sims who served as a sacrificial poet, which is someone who opens the competition to give the judges a chance to practice their judging before the competing performers start.
For our group performers, we had Zachary McKinney, Alyssa McNish, Sophie Mehu, and Sarah Kenney. The group piece scored so well that it will now be performed at the LTAB semi-finals. When competing in the semi-finals, our team will compete in one out of four bouts. From there, the first-place winner from each bout will advance to the finals.
Photo Credit: Sofia DaSilva
Advice from our competitors
When asked for tips about performing poetry, Zachary McKinney, Cadence Poetry Club treasurer, says “Make sure that you have confidence in your poem because that will lead to you putting some form of emotion into it, and that will enhance the overall performance.” And when asked for advice for auditioning for next year’s LTAB competition team, Carolina Gonzalez, Cadence Poetry Club President, says “I would work with yourself with memorization. I would make sure that your poem is in the exact format in the lining you want it to be in before, I’d say 4-5 months before competition, so you have that time to practice.”
How to join the Cadence Poetry Club
If you have an interest in writing, want a safe place to express your feelings and emotions, or enjoy hearing poetry from fellow peers, the club meets every Friday in room 1115. All you have to do to join the club is have a signed parent permission form which you can get from the club’s meeting room.
