A school in the west zone of Rio de Janeiro will be the next educational institution to embrace the project Poetics at School – Slam. Starting this Wednesday (8), Escola Municipal Ginásio Emilinha Borba, in the Santa Cruz neighborhood, will host 10 workshops given to students between 12 and 14 years old about slam: beat or impact in English, a term that also designates poetry with a social critical bias, recited without musical or costume resources.
Students will have classes until mid-November. The project has already been carried out in 13 schools in the city and metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro, and has reached more than 2,770 young people. The objective is to develop literature and poetic expression among students.
The initiative is from the organization Alkebulan Arte & Cultura, with the support of public institutions, such as the Ministry of Culture and the State Secretariat for Culture and Creative Economy of Rio de Janeiro.
Impact
Project coordinator Felipe Calarco says he believes that the experience has a positive impact on students’ interest in reading.
According to Calarco, many young people who were shy begin to express themselves with more confidence after the experience, both in speaking and writing. Others discover in poetry a way of dealing with feelings and elaborating on their own experiences. According to the professor, there are reports of students who, after the project, became more interested in reading, looking for references and even writing spontaneously, outside of meetings.
Despite the benefits of the project, Calarco complains about the lack of financial resources to better structure Poéticas na Escola, in addition to the difficulty of reconciling the project with the already established school routine. At the Emilinha Borba school, for example, the workshops will take place after school.
The original idea of promoting poetry battles in schools emerged in Chicago (USA) in the 1980s, and in Brazil it was embraced mainly by young audiences, from the suburbs, as a tool of expression and resistance. The country has a national competition circuit.
*Intern under the supervision of journalist Gilberto Costa
