Get Lit – Words Ignite to Host 11th annual Classic Poetry Slam

Get Lit - Words Ignite, the Los Angeles-based educational nonprofit whose mission is to increase literacy, empower youth, and energize communities through poetry and visual media will hold its 11th annual Classic Poetry Slam April 21- 23, 2022. The three-day Classic Slam event, which culminates with the Grand Slam Finals, is the largest Classic Poetry Slam in the world and includes hundreds of young poets from schools throughout California. These young poets will come together to perform classic poems and original spoken word response pieces, live, for a panel of judges. The public is invited to watch the live stream of the Grand Slam Finals on April 23rd beginning at 5pm PST on ClassicSlam.org. This year's judges will include world-renowned authors, poets, artists, and cultural luminaries such as Safia Elhillo, Brian Sonia-Wallace, Yesika Salgado, Sam Rush, and Edwin Bodney. The 2022 slam will be hosted by actress, activist and poet Ashley August along with poet Vanessa Tahay and will also feature DJ Franky.

Get Lit - Words Ignite, one of the nation's leading non-profit arts and literacy organizations for spoken word poetry and film. The organization fuses classic and spoken word poetry to increase literacy, empower youth, and inspire communities.

On April 21st and 22nd students will compete in Quarter & Semi-Final rounds in order to earn a spot in the Classic Slam 2022 Finals on April 23rd. Get Lit will award over $10,000 in cash and prizes to both poets and educators. The Classic Slam 2022 will be streaming across and through www.ClassicSlam.org. Online audiences will be able to watch their favorite team compete for the championship title. Some of the Los Angeles High Schools participating include LA School of Global Studies, Hamilton, Larchmont Charter, Animo Inglewood, Venice High School, Cleveland High School, Harvard-Westlake, San Gabriel High School, and more.

Get Lit was founded in 2006 after Diane Luby Lane created a one-woman show about the power of books and toured colleges, high schools, jails, and detention centers with iconic Chicano poet Jimmy Santiago Baca. After the show closed, Lane started teaching classic and spoken word poetry in three high schools: Fairfax, Fremont, and Walt Whitman Continuation. Today, the curriculum has expanded to over 140 schools throughout California, and is sold to schools all over the world. Get Lit's poetic ambassadors, the Get Lit Players, have over 350 million online views.

Get Lit invites students to recite classic poems, and then perform their own spoken word responses. This creates a dialogue between the classic poet and the student. However, at Get Lit a classic isn't a classic because it's old, it's a classic because it's great. Participants in The Classic Slam are just as likely to perform the work of Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost as they are to hear poems by Elizabeth Acevedo and Tupac Shakur. "We are so excited to be back in-person after holding the past two Classic Slams virtually," said Diane Luby Lane, Founder of Get Lit. "This year's event will bring together hundreds of students, many of whom will be participating in the competition for the first time."

This year's Classic Slam is sponsored by VANS, We Rise LA, the Rosenthal Family Foundation, LA vs. HATE.

Check a video from original Get Lit Classic Slam, featuring youth poets from Southern California below!

@GetLitPoet #ClassicSlam

April 23rd at ClassicSlam.org

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ABOUT GET LIT

Get Lit - Words Ignite is a Los Angeles-based education nonprofit founded in 2006 by author and educator Diane Luby Lane, to increase literacy, empower youth, and energize communities through poetry and visual media. The organization aims to transform the lives of young people worldwide through classic and spoken word poetry. Through the use of specialized curriculums, the program engages young people by providing a creative outlet, community, and real-life work experience, transforming students into activists, scholars, and stars.

The only program of its kind in the nation, Get Lit has created a unique call-and-response model where students identify classic poems that resonate with their own stories, and write original responses, inspiring students to discover, develop, and amplify their voices while learning and exploring classic poetry from the past and present. At Get Lit, "a classic isn't a classic because it's old, a classic is a classic because it's great."

Get Lit annually reaches 50,000 youth ages 9 through young adulthood through its In-School and After-School programs. Instruction culminates in the three-day Classic Slam, the largest classic youth poetry competition in the country. Get Lit is also home to the Get Lit Players (GLPs), an award-winning youth poetry troupe who have collaborated with the United Nations, John Legend, the White House, and more, inspiring their peers to read, write, uplift their communities and participate in the arts.

85% of Get Lit's students are from under-resourced areas; 92% are students of color. Get Lit reaches students, whether they are in the front row, in the back of the classroom, or online. Graduating students have gone on to successes including positions as Youth Poet Laureates of the U.S., staff writers on top television shows, United Nations Youth Ambassadors, Grammy-winning artists, and Fulbright Scholars. Get Lit was chosen as a 2020 Library of Congress Literacy Awards Best Practice Honoree, one of only 15 in the world. In addition, Diane Luby Lane's book Get Lit Rising (Simon & Schuster) won the 2016 Nautilus Award for books that "bring hope, healing, wisdom, and joy."

Premiering at the 2022 Santa Barbara film festival, the documentary OUR WORDS COLLIDE features 5 poets from the program and provides a timely view as to how transformative the Get Lit program can be for young people, especially during the past few years. The Anti-Defamation League awarded its ADL Stand Up Award to the film during the 2022 Santa Barbara International FIlm Festival. The ADL Stand Up Award is awarded to one film that exemplifies the impact storytelling can have on fostering mutual understanding and respect consistent with ADL's mission to secure "justice and fair treatment to all."

In January, it was announced that Get Lit now partnered with the Writers Guild Foundation on a youth screenwriting program that will support a new generation of diverse storytellers to have 1:1 mentoring from some of today's top film and tv writers. The two year program will allow participants to create a final script that can be pitched, optioned, produced, or used as a sample piece to acquire representation or employment.

27 Get Lit poets also co-wrote and co-starred in the film "Summertime" directed by Carlos López Estrada. The film premiered opening night at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and opened in theaters across the U.S. in 2021. The film is currently available on Amazon and other platforms, and a PG version is available for classrooms. Get Lit poets have performed at premier venues such as the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, the Hollywood Bowl, The White House, and the United Nations.

In early 2022, Get Lit will officially launch Uni(verse), the world's first interactive poetry platform for the classroom, community, and beyond. Get Lit's Uni(verse) will enable students throughout the US and internationally, to take Get Lit's standards-aligned "Words Ignite" course online and to exchange ideas both within and outside of school. It will feature Get Lit's interactive poetry Anthology, searchable by poet, theme, literary device, etc. Uni(verse) will build and strengthen communication, collaboration, empathy, and community throughout the world through the vehicle of poetry.

For more information, please visit: www.getlit.org or www.ClassicSlam.org

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