As a former High school student I found that poetry was unwelcoming for my demographic. When I was in school the poetry I would read was by Shakespeare, Frost, and anything in-between. For the average High school students, this would forcibly bore them away from poetry. Now when a student hears the word poem they would most likely recall war flashbacks of iambic hell. While there is a surplus of formal poetry out there, there is more to contemporary poetry than sonnets and sestinas. Contemporary poetry is more experimental and interesting, but the average student does not know about it.
The world of contemporary poetry is vast and always pushing to be more original and therefore more interesting, catering to anyone's taste. However, I find looking for poetry is similar to searching for scholarships because you really have to dig deep if you want to find one that best fits you and then you have to keep looking to find more. Much like scholarships, a lot of contemporary poetry is online, in online magazines called literary magazines. These magazines are filled with different forms of contemporary literature of different genres and can really open the literary world up to anyone. Through lit magazines, I was able to find my interest in poetry.
For teens and young adults there is a form of poetry that I find the most engaging, this art form is called “Spoken word”. Spoken word poetry is a very engrossing because not only can someone read a Spoken word poem and be fascinated by it, but when it is performed by the poet who wrote it the experience is truly memorable. To see spoken word poetry in action, students should attend Slam competitions; Slam competitions (or Slams) are a form of competitive spoken word, in which the poets are forced to perform their poem to the best of their ability in order to win the slam.
Slam deals with many contemporary issues such as discrimination, bullying, poverty, and so on; however there are a few teens and young adults of today that perform these topics. While poetry is seen as an old man’s sport, Slam is friendly to poet's young and old, in-turn evening out the playing field; it is perfect for students of the current generation who want to express their unique struggles. It is through Slam and Spoken word that I believe the average student should enter the world of contemporary poetry, as it is an art form that is the most encapsulating.
Trying to enter the world of poetry can be daunting, poetry is subjective and a person’s taste in poetry is subjective; making finding a direction to take difficult. However, upon entering this world, students can find the clichés of all the previous poems they’ve heard before are either satirical or non-existent in contemporary works.
