Help PYPM Match funds for our Knight Arts Grant. We must match our grant funds for each year we are a recipient. Fundraising for year one ends on May 31, 2012.
Or mail check payable to Philly Youth Poetry Movement to
Philly Youth Poetry Movement
P.O Box 42832
Philadelphia, PA 19101
The Philly Youth Poetry Movement’s (PYPM) slam team competed against 50 youth poetry teams from across the country and beyond in the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Festival to win the championship. Brave New Voices is the largest spoken word event in the world and was featured on HBO in 2010 and 2008. This year the festival took place in San Francisco, California from July 20-23.
On July 23, the Brave New Voices Grand Slam Finals took place in front of a sold-out crowd of 3,000 people in the San Francisco Opera House. The Philly Youth Poetry Movement joined teams from Denver, Detroit and New York City to compete in finals for the title. PYPM, who trailed throughout the final slam, pulled out the victory by 0.3 points. Read More
CNN reporter, Sarah Hoye, recently shadowed the PYPM 2010-2011 Slam Season and Saturday Workshops for a feature story on their website about the Movement. Listen to the stories from the youth themselves, about how poetry and the organization is helping change their lives, their outlook and how they feel about themselves as people. Click here for the full article. Click here for the follow up article "Philly kids want city to be known for more than flash mobs."
We're personally inviting you, and as many of your friends and family as you can invite, to dine at Trolley Car Diner & Café anytime during the entire week of July 4-10, 2011 (Monday - Friday 7AM -9 PM; Saturday and Sunday 3PM-9PM). Trolley Car Diner & Café will generously donate 15% of the cost of your meal to PYPM. All you need to do is eat and drink at our favorite Diner or Café and present the special coupon when paying the cashier (click to open & print coupon). Read More
The Philly Youth Poetry Movement (PYPM) is a proud recipient of a $40,000 grant that will go toward establishing a permanent gathering space to run literary arts education programs for youth from around the Philadelphia area. The grant comes from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, as part of its Knight Arts Challenge and will fund a space that will offer free poetry and cultural workshops, homework tutoring, and life-skills mentoring.
The Philly Youth Poetry Movement is one of 36 projects out of over 1,700 applicants to receive such an award. The Knight Foundation's Knight Arts Challenge is a $9 million initiative supporting innovative projects that inspire and enrich Philadelphia's communities. The grant will help ensure that PYPM is a sustainable fixture in the community by funding a space that will expand its programs. Read More
Directed by Greg Corbin, PYPM Executive Director, and Cait Miner, PYPM Director of Educational Affairs, "Breathe-Body-Move: Reflections of an Urban Wasteland" is an original choreopoem featuring a compilation of poetry written by PYPM poets Jamarr Hall, Victor Jackson, Seff Al-Afriqi, Hiwot Adilow, Jamillah Harris and Kai Davis, with Shakari Drame providing acoustic guitar. PYPM premiered this stage show at the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts for the 2011 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts in April. Those interested in booking a performance of "Breathe-Body-Move" can request additional information by completing the PYPM Booking Form.
Youth poets Alana Gooden, 19, and Alex Santiago, 16, entered the DefJam Rapstar Get Schooled video challenge in March, in hopes of being selected to perform their original piece on BET's 106 & Park. Get Schooled is a non-profit organization that engages and empowers Americans to help improve high school graduation rates, improve college readiness and raise college completion rates. Winners of the video contest will be announced on April 8th. Click here to see the Get Schooled article about PYPM and to watch Alana and Alex's video submissions.
Poetry N Motion will host their first annual Award Show where poets from all over Philadelphia will receive recognition for their outstanding talents in various categories including Best Poet Male & Female, Strongest Deliver Male & Female, Best Hip Hop Poet, and also Best Youth Poet Male & Female. Read More
A Gathering of Myself, the first of a three part series, is a compilation of 30 poems by Seff Al-Afriqi. The poems include some of the author’s early work to his present day greater literary accomplishments. Al-Afriqi goes beyond the mechanics of what makes a great poem. He delves into the most important factors, the rhetoric, the truth, the healing, the content, the conviction, and the person. He believes “We often forget that at the end of the day, we are all still people. And as human beings, we all need to gather ourselves from time to time. ” This book accomplishes just that. Click here to purchase a copy of "A Gathering of Myself".
Anthony Hyland, born and raised in North Philadelphia, is a young poet with very high aspirations, and no lack of ambition to make them happen. He recently graduated from Fitzsimmons High School as the class valedictorian, and received a full four-year academic scholarship to attend Voorhees College in Denmark, SC, where he intends to study Sociology.
Anthony attributes his focus on success to being able to use writing and poetry as a creative outlet. "I write because writing is my passion. Writing has always been my positive outlet to the burning anger that dwells within my soul. Whenever I felt myself slipping away from reality I grab my pencil and pad, then go to work." Read More
When I think of education, and my body starts shaken,
rising like levitation,
my brain armed and dangerous
I ask myself...
-What is Education?
Is it sitting in class making a constant fuss,
won't do any work but the first one to cuss,
everyone’s quiet so you have to get up,
and start an argument with a student...
just to seem tough?
-What is Education?
The subway train rattles forward, filled with downcast faces on a dreary Monday morning. This is the room Jadon Woodard works most mornings, walking through the cars and booming: “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen!” He launches into his act, improvising a spoken word rhyme about a passenger’s apparel or, if they’ll help with the material, a riff off someone’s name.
Jadon will rake in a few bucks in donations for the entertainment. He used to need these sessions; it was the way he scraped together enough money to get off the street for the night. He also does it to hone his craft, just for the adrenalin rush of working the SEPTA orange line – possibly the toughest room in Philadelphia.
no matter what they tell you, love...is nothing more then a fairytale.
a book of dreams differed
written in the ink of wandering hands
and viewed through the lens of lustful eyes
but i...i still believe in your neverland
and ill grow young with you
in a book tattered and stained with happily ever afters i was never after
somehow i always prefered disaster
to the sultry lure of my beautiful page master
