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When McDaniel High School librarian Nancy Sullivan originally started the first youth poetry slam competitions in Portland in 2005, she didn’t have any concept of the new event’s staying power. Sullivan certainly didn’t think that, 20 years later, she would be interviewed about Verselandia!, a citywide slam poetry event that will take the stage at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on April 24. So, forgive her if she can’t remember exactly how many students participated that first year, or what year Literary Arts started hosting the championships.
“Things happen so fast and furious at school and then you’re on to the next thing,” says Sullivan, who is still the librarian at McDaniel. “You forget to reflect and capture all that data.”
After sifting through some boxes looking for a 2005 poetry slam zine to no avail, Sullivan eventually landed on “about 12” for that first year’s participation number. Literary Arts came on as producer in 2012.
There is no mistaking, though, the program that she created. Verselandia! gives Portland Public Schools high school students, along with those at a few suburban schools, the chance to perform their original poetry in front of about 1,000 people. There are play-in (rhyme-in?) rounds at individual schools to choose which performers will go on to the championship at the Schnitz. Two students typically represent each school, along with one alternate. Once there, Literary Arts treats them like rock stars—going backstage, doing sound check, and feeding them a nice dinner.
Teen angst has been a constant subject matter for the poets over the past two decades, but since the COVID pandemic, the themes have been particularly dark.
“Often they are not pretty,” Sullivan says. “These are teenagers out there living lives and they are not always wonderful.”
Past Verselandia! poems have addressed abuse, drug use and absentee parents—but also some hilarious, uplifting poems, or big surprises. At a March 5 freshman poetry slam at McDaniel, one student wrote about salmon. “You just never know what they’re thinking about.”
And while Sullivan says she wishes she had kept better records over the 20 years, a certain amount of flexibility has served her well in spearheading youth poetry slams for so long.
“I don’t have students sign up ahead of time because when I used to have them do that, the ones who signed up didn’t come and the ones who came didn’t sign up,” she says. “So now I just take whoever shows.”
SEE IT: Verselandia! Youth Poetry Slam Championship at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 800-915-4698, portland5.com/arlene-schnitzer-concert-hall/events/verselandia-youth-poetry-slam-championship. 7 pm Thursday, April 24. $20-$70, free for students.