To some
students, poetry is a form of creative expression, to others, it is just a
difficult element of their Literature classes! However, afterschool on Thursday
the 25th of August, around 35 of us had the chance to explore a more unique,
modern and fun genre of poetry: Slam Poetry. Two aspiring Slam Poets from one
of the Delhi Slam Poets group, Shibani Das and Aastha Singh, led this workshop.
They first got
the students creative juices flowing by asking them to draw one item that
symbolizes them. The students rose to the challenge; images of items from
tangled earphones to books graced the sticky notes. They then helped the
students differentiate between more conventional poetry and Slam Poetry. The
students contributed to the discussion and learnt that Slam was more focused on
conveying ideas that concern us in interesting ways to live audiences. The
students then got to watch professional slam Poets on YouTube as well as live
performances by Aastha and Shibani. Thus inspired, the students created their own
short poems and passed them around the class where their peers wrote responses
also in the form of poetry. Now that we had the creative skills and inspiration
to write poems, Shibani and Aastha taught essential skills for performance and
a couple of brave souls from the student audience presented their original
pieces. We also did a Penguin dance to shed our inhibitions of going up on
stage!
It is safe to say that the students who
attended the workshop are sufficiently prepared and excited for the upcoming
Slam Poetry Inter-House competition!
