SLAM!: Performance Poetry from the Underrepresented

by Monique Franz, Akin Jeje (editor), Odette Cortés (editor)

SLAM! brings together the top winners and finalists of the 2024 Kinsman Poetry Slam, a vibrant showcase of BIPOC and underrepresented poets from every corner of the globe. This dynamic collection pulses with raw emotion and unfiltered truth, as each poet tackles hard-hitting themes of culture, resilience, passion, and justice.

Through evocative rhythms and masterful form, the featured poets deliver verse that is both deeply personal and profoundly universal. From confronting the realities of systemic oppression to celebrating the richness of cultural heritage, SLAM! is a bold testament to the power of poetry as a force for change. Each piece invites readers to listen with their hearts, challenging them to engage with the words that echo far beyond the page.

This collection will leave you captivated, inspired, and eager for more. This is poetry at its most electrifying-alive, unapologetic, and necessary.

216 pages, Paperback

Published October 17, 2024

About the author

Monique Franz is a published playwright, novelist, and teaching artist whose work highlights the challenges of marginalized communities. For over twenty years, she created arts enrichment programs for youth and wrote onstage works to bring awareness to social issues, such as domestic abuse, trauma, and displacement. Franz earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University, where she won the Beverly Hiscox and Norris Church Mailer scholarship awards.

Reviews

[Sylvia Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

we dipped in and out of this anthology, found some poets we really responded to and others less so. Ade Anita's Johnsons poem about greens struck us a great fun and yet deeply telling. others also resonated deeply in terms of the human struggles and injustices.