April 1st, 2025, Coral Springs High School Cadence Poetry Club competed in the preliminary bout for the Louder Than a Bomb poetry competition and advanced to the Semi-finals, which takesplace on April 12th.
What is LTAB?
LTAB, which stands for Louder Than a Bomb, is the largest youth poetry festival in the world. It was founded in 2001 by Kevin Coval and Anna West through the Young Chicago Authors to provide a place for Chicago youth 13-19 to share their stories through spoken word poetry.
They launched the program in 2013, according to JasonTaylorFoundation.com: “Football legend Jason Taylor and his Jason Taylor Foundation took Blue Apple to new heights by bringing the “Super Bowl of Poetry” to South Florida!”
Later in 2014-15 was the launch of Louder Than a Bomb. Which united South Florida’s Youth community through the art of spoken word. They have performed solos and group poems in a tournament-style competition. Which has been hosted in over 13 other cities across the U.S.
How Does it work?
Schools across South Florida competed and 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 0-10. 0 being the worst and 10 being the 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 score being 30.
Our competitors
For our solo performers, we had Liam Kenny who made it to the Indy finals, Sofia DaSilva, and Oliva Allen who also made it to the Indy Finals. For are one duo performance, we had Celeste and Aaron Alejandre.
For our group performance, we had Zachary Mckinney, Sophie Mehu, Sarah Kenney, and Sofia DaSilva. Congratulations to everyone who performed and made it through. April 11 is when Indy finals are being held at 1 p.m. for Coral Springs High School Students.
Advice from our poets:
When asked what advice you would give new upcoming poets. 11th-grade poet Sarah Kenny says, “Poetry is a safe place, and I’ve made a lot of friends there and became closer with people because of it. And it’s a good way to get over stage fright because at LTAB everyone is equally scared, and they support each other.” When 11th-grade poet Liam Kenny was asked the same question he said, “Practice your poem in front of someone that you don’t care about Here it is so you can get feedback.”
How you can be the next person to perform?
If you want a safe place to express your feelings, share thoughts, or just listen to poetry from classmates, you’re in luck. Room 1115 hasclub meetings every Friday. All you must do is grab a form for your parent’s permission to let you stay after school, which you can get from room 1115 with Ms. Tate!
