people together in ways that other events don’t. It allows people to gather in a room to hear one another yielding robust conversations that cross boundaries normally not crossed. Others get to hear what’s truly going on in neighborhoods across the city from those that live it everyday, instead of watching a three minute story that is a microcosm of what the media portrays. LTAB allows young people to value and understand their own voice, which can trickle down to their own community.
Although LTAB has been a huge success, Coval doesn’t necessarily agree. “I don’t think that we’re truly successful yet. The idea is to change the city for real, but unfortunately we’re faced with the same situations that were there in 2001. There was war then and there is constant war now. We’re successful in changing the world of poetry, but that’s such a small world. We’re invested in trying to change a city and we have a long way to go.”
Young Chicago Authors is attracting a diversity of talented, courageous, and self directed students. Tuesday nights in their offices is “Word Play” night. On some occasions, this open mic set brings in students from nearly 100 different area codes. The mix of students that gather are from all over the city and range from those at the top of their class to those that have not done so well. Coval emphasized, “When the mix of people are right you learn that there are innumerable ways to be in the world. Everybody really does have a story to tell and these kids have a desire to be heard.” YCA and LTAB create a welcoming space that doesn’t criminalize young people when they walk through the door. No one is left out and everyone is encouraged to be themselves.
LTAB is in fifteen other cities across North America and Coval’s vision is to have a LTAB team and a club in every school in the city. He likens the future of the poetry slam to a basketball tournament with divisions, regionals and super sectionals. He also wants to expand their summer program at University of Illinois at Chicago to include fall conditioning workshops and a scalable strategy to re-engage young people through education. “We want young people to be inspired and on fire about something even if it’s not writing. My vision is just not Chicago, but to build LTAB like organizations across the world,” he concluded. Whatever the case may be, Mr. Coval is committed to nurturing and listening to our young people, and helping them to understand the power of poetry as they tell their story.