When Team Black walks onto the University of Chicago campus, heads turn. In our matching bright purple Tshirts, heartfelt chant, and ride-or-die entourage, Philly’s Spoken word team enters, ready to meet everyone, to Get Free with their poetry, and to be changed forever. Brave New Voices, an international Youth Poetry Festival, is booming with teams of dedicated young poets ready to compete for their chance at becoming the next Brave New Voices Champion, but the air is anything but hostile.The teams great each other with love, respect, and mutual understanding for the craft. These unfamiliar faces felt more like long lost relatives. They felt like the family we had never known we missed. The best part was knowing they felt the same way. Almost immediately there is a noticeable feeling in the air that says, “Something beautiful is going to happen here.”
It takes an incredible amount of courage to bear your soul to a room full of strangers, but it takes even more to do so for your peers. To allow yourself to uncover yourself, fully, is a bravness only seen in passionate young poets. With every poem, whether it be painfull, satirical, or educational, these words are not simply silently muttered beneath glaring stage lights. They are declarations of humanity, not digitilized replicas of the youtube poets we respect from afar. We created connections with real human beings, based solely on our craft. Audiences felt the strength pour off the stage. Poetry has a way of making us feel a little less alone than when we started. It creates connections between people of all different walks of life, it allows us the language to create long lasting relationships.
At Breakfast on the first day of festivities, our coach, Vision, waved his hand over two young poets and said “Make Team South Africa feel welcome.” We had no idea how welcome they would inevitably make us feel. Siyabonga and Lerato were sweet and timid at first, just beginning to become accustomed to America, but before any of us knew it we had become family. We did not notice the oceans between us. We did not notice the differences in upbringings. We only noticed how poetry could take our pain and make it so universal that we could find family in people who, at first, are merely strangers. The connections we made with our fellow BNVers, made us feel like as long as we had our Poetry, it doesn’t matter where we are- whether it be Philly, New York, Sacramento, Texas, Toronto, Denver, or even as far away as South Africa, we will never be alone. We will always find family. We will be changed by these people and we will change them. By the last day, Lerato and Siyabonga were joined by one other teammate, Neo, and the connection between us all grew even faster. When Team South Africa performed on Final Stage, Team Black chanted for them, like we would our own. Lerato, Neo, and Siyabonga, changed us. They changed me. Lee welcomed us like a sister would. Neo open himself up to us, even when there was a chance we would never understand. Sia allowed us to fall in love with his smile, and his intelligence, and his wonder about the world. If we were to be asked what BNV means to us, we would most likely reflect on our goodbyes. With all of the tears, all of the poems mentioned, and love in the air, all of the numbers exchanged, the Facebook names, the hugs, the smiles, the laughs, all of the sadness from separating from our new friends, but the happiness of knowing that we met them in the first place, knowing there is always next year (at our home base in Philly, by the way) is a powerful thing. It is all of those things that make BNV.
