Louder Than A Bomb

The largest of its kind in the world, Louder Than a Bomb (LTAB) is the city’s rapidly-growing teen poetry festival. 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.

As author and LTAB co-founder and artistic director Kevin Coval describes, “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.”

LTAB: Chicago’s Youth Poetry Slam Festival

Based on alumni surveys, LTAB boasts an 85% high school graduation rate, and most notably—within a year of national discussion on youth violence—has had zero incidents of violence in it’s 10 years of working with students from across the city. Traditionally operating outside of regular school programming, LTAB brings together poetry teams that are often founded by students and coached pro-bono by teachers, for the annual three week competition each Spring.

Louder Than a Bomb’s 10th anniversary year is themed “The Real Chicago Renaissance,” a play on Chicago Public Schools controversial Renaissance 2010 school privatization program. Beginning February 20th, with finals taking place at The Vic Theater March 6, LTAB 10 will be dedicated to Chicago’s legendary oral historian Studs Terkel.

Team competition at LTAB

For more information, please contact Robbie Q. Telfer, Performances Manager, at: robbie@youngchicagoauthors.org, or 773.486.4331 ext. 17.

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