FREEVERSE!

This is the youth piece of our mission. We are facilitators for young people to develop their talent through spoken word and other artistic media. Our commitment is to work with community agencies and organizations to allow youth poets to determine how and why they want to develop their expression. Mentors for this group generally come from within the group, as one “generation” of youth poets grows up to encourage the next. One important program for Freeverse! involves bringing high school age poets into the middle and elementary schools to guide younger children to develop themselves as poets. Another ongoing program is the Freeverse! team, which has been involved in various statewide poetry competitions (winning Louder Than A Bomb in 2015), as well as hosting a series of teen team slams with invited groups from other high schools and youth organizations in the area. We have also sent representatives to Brave New Voices, a national youth poetry competition started in 1998. In addition, we do a number of workshops and performance events that are open to teens in and around Lowell, usually free of charge, using various community spaces such as Pollard Library and Lowell High School.