MASS LEAP COLLECTIVE PRESENTS: LOUDER THAN A BOMB

Contact: Meaghan Ford, Press Coordinator



Tel. 908-472-2236


Email: fordmeaghan@gmail.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MASS LEAP COLLECTIVE PRESENTS: LOUDER THAN A BOMB

Youth Poetry Takes Center Stage

BOSTON, Mass January 5, 2012--This spring, Mass LEAP celebrates the very first Louder Than A Bomb festival in

Massachusetts. Louder Than A Bomb was started in Chicago in 2001 by poets Anna West and Kevin Coval. It’s since

grown to be the largest teen poetry festival in the world, and even inspired a full-length feature film

(www.louderthanabombfilm.com). Teaming with Mass Poetry, Mass LEAP will be hosting the event on the MIT

campus in Kresge Hall and will also be hosting the “Student Day of Poetry” in which all youth, competing in the

LTAB festival or otherwise, are welcome. There will be workshops, preliminary bouts, special events, and an

amazing time had by all.

“Aiming to bring teens together across racial, gang, and socio-economic lines, LTAB is a friendly competition that

emphasizes self-expression and community via poetry, oral story-telling, and hip-hop spoken word.” In this inaugural year

Mass LEAP hopes to garner enough enthusiasm for the festival to be able to continue it yearly with as much success at

Chicago and other cities. Any Massachusetts high school, club, organization, teacher, or individual can register a team to

compete at LTAB: Massachusetts.

Preliminary bouts between the registered teams will take place March 30th to April 1st with finals being held on April 13th

at a venue to be announced shortly.

For more information please visit massleapcollective.org

LTAB: Massachusetts: A Mass LEAP and Mass Poetry Event
www.massleapcollective.org

Louder

thaN BOMBmassachusetts---------------*a

About Louder Than a Bomb

“For three minutes at a time the students speak about their lives. For the other eighty-seven minutes, they are listening to

the lives and stories and dreams of others. Kids that don’t look like them and come from a different neighborhood. In listening, the city shrinks.” - K. Coval, LTAB co-founder

Founded in 2001 the largest youth poetry slam in a world strives to bring together teens, ages 13-19, for a friendly

competition. The goal is to bring together the youth poetry communities and organizations across the area. Begun in Chicago by poets Anna West and Kevin Coval, Louder Than a Bomb has spread across the nation inspiring teens in poetry communities to become leaders. Now, it’s Massachusetts’ turn. Hosting their very first Louder than a Bomb festival, the established and

budding youth communities will get to come together and compete. Louder Than a Bomb sprung out of Poetry Slam, the “competitive art of performance poetry” also birthed in Chicago by Matt Smith. A new form of poetry and oral tradition, slam poetry fuses together poetics, stand-up comedy, lyricism, and storytelling to bring the artists words to a new audience.

About Mass LEAP

Mass LEAP is a network of artists, educators, and students working together to create a vibrant youth poetry community

in Greater Boston. We work together to connect teaching artists with schools and other organizations in order to create

opportunities for the youth of the Commonwealth to experience, create, and performance poetry. Our goals are to empower the voices of young people, foster creativity, promote literacy, and build community.

We offer:

+ Writing workshops

+ Open mics

+ Poetry slams

+ Adult development training for educators who want to incorporate spoken word into their curricula

About Mass Poetry

MassPoetry.org is a new program to connect poets and poetry with larger audiences. The project grew out of roundtables with poets in every part of the state to explore that condition of poetry in Massachusetts. Those roundtables were a

collaborative effort between MassPoetry.org, the Mass Cultural Council and MassHumanities.

The purpose of MassPoetry.org is to create resources to aid and support the Massachusetts poetry community, to reconnect poetry to more mainstream culture, to create new audiences for poetry and to organize the poetry community throughout

the state.

about

LTAB: Massachusetts: A Mass LEAP and Mass Poetry Event
www.massleapcollective.org

LTAB: Massachusetts: A Mass LEAP and Mass Poetry Event
www.massleapcollective.org

MassPoetry and Mass L.E.A.P. are partnering to create the first ever state-wide youth poetry slam festival and tournament, modeled after the wildly popular Young Chicago Authors Program. Over 20 teams from across the Commonwealth will

connect, compete and share their work over the weekend of March 30th to April 1st, 2012. All three day’s events are taking place at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.

LTAB Venues & Dates

Friday, March 30th: Student Day of Poetry & Crossing The Street

@ MIT’s Kresge Hall & campus (8-3pm)

Saturday, March 31st: LTAB Preliminaries

@ MIT Student Center (9-6pm)

Sunday, April 1st: LTAB Semi-Finals

@ MIT Kresge Little Theater (10-5pm)

Friday, April 13th: LTAB FINALS

@ Venue