A group of four women take the stage; they start doing imaginary double-dutch and chanting words of what “girldom” means to them.

Performances like this are not unusual at Louder Than A Bomb (LTAB), the teen slam poetry competition run by Young Chicago Authors.

Students spend from November to March, writing poetry, which they turn into performances. Topics vary from police brutality to love to racism.

LTAB is a Chicago-based competition, which was started in an effort to keep Chicago youth off the streets and give them a place to express themselves. According to the Young Chicago Authors website, “Chicago enforced an anti-gang loitering law that gave police powers to arbitrarily select people for arrest and punishment, resulting in innocent youth across Chicagoland being denied their right to peacefully assemble.” The program was created by Kevin Coval, a poet and the artistic director of Young Chicago Authors.

This year’s Lane team is made up of six poets, who competed in the Semi-Finals of LTAB at the Metro on March 13, which put them in the Top 16 teams.

“Slam is essentially a big game,” said Ms. Meacham, Lane’s Slam Coach. “It’s a trick to get people to listen to poetry.”

Meacham, in addition to Mr. Telles are Lane’s coaches for LTAB. They each take an individual aspect of Slam to work on. Meacham is in charge of the performance of the poem, while Telles works with writing the poem. Meacham’s goal as a coach is to get students to be confident with their writing and performing abilities, and be happy with their work by the end of the season, regardless of the result.

Each poet’s process varies, some change their original poem in the middle of the competition season. Neicy Williams, Div. 772, changed her poem three times, the first one being about love, the second being about falling out of love, and the third being about loving herself and the skin she’s in.

Williams’s favorite line from her final poem is, “Stripped myself of comments like you’re pretty… for a black girl. Stripped myself until their was only black queen.”

Williams believes the atmosphere for the slam bouts helped her out a lot in her performances.

“The environment is so supportive,” she said. “If you forget a line, they’re cheering you on until you can remember.”

Although Lane’s slam team was not able to win the semi-finals and go to team finals, an individual poet did advance. Lily Craelius, Division 768, went to city finals on Thursday, March 17.

“Everyone knows me as the big hair girl who sings in her poems,” Craelius said.

Craelius’s poem is about her “everyday experiences.”

“The poem that I’m doing this year was inspired by my English teacher, Ms. Bey, and that fact that I can count all the black teachers I know of on two hands,” Craelius said. “Which I think is a problem, especially when most of our student population is of color.”

Craelius placed 6th out of the 13 performers at the individual finals for LTAB.