Sacrficial Poets hold poetry slam in search of new members

The Sacrificial Poets will hold a Grand Slam on Friday in hopes of finding six new team members.

The Sacrificial Poets, who plan to become a 501©(3) nonprofit in the next few months, are a local slam poetry team composed of teens ages 13 to 19 from the Triangle area.

The group works with local youth in order to create a sense of empowerment and a safe forum for expressing their experiences and emotions, said Will McInerney, executive director of the Sacrificial Poets.

“Youth are a very marginalized group in society. They’re very much silenced by societal factors,” McInerney said.

“So often people come in and try to empower them. Our organization does not do that. (We) seek to create spaces where young people empower themselves through their own unique voice, their own story, their own words.”

The slam will be held at 7 p.m. at Carrboro High School.

The winner from each qualifying slam will be invited back for the Grand Slam Finals. At the finals, the six poets with the highest score will be invited to join the team.

“Judges judge on a scale from 0-10,” said Jake Jacoby, programming director for the Sacrificial Poets. “10 is the best poem they ever had.”

In order to calculate the score, the judges will drop the highest and lowest scores and average the middle three ratings. A poem is critiqued on its presentation, writing and performance.

“How good are the metaphors and similes? How good did you paint the pictures?” Jacoby said. “If a line someone says sends chills down my spine, (that’s a 10).”

Jacoby likes to tell the competing teens that the point is not the point — the point is the poetry.

“Practice makes perfect, but writing will set you free,” Jacoby said. “We do this, not to be the top person doing it, but for the self expression, for our self-healing.”

In addition to holding workshops at local schools, the organization works with the Marian Cheek Jackson Center and Fusion Youth Radio to enable local teens to share their stories.

McInerney, as well as the rest of the Sacrificial Poets, said he feels strongly about providing the tools to empower the next generation of leaders.

“(It is) important for the youth of that community to have their voices heard,” McInerney said.

One of these teens is Chapel Hill High School senior Daniel Kaplan.

In addition to being a member of Sacrificial Poets, Kaplan is also the president of Chapel Hill High School’s Slam Poetry club.

Kaplan said the club holds open mics for poetry readings once a month, which usually draw a crowd of about 50 to 70 people.

For Kaplan, spoken word poetry is therapy.

“There’s a lot of angry love poems. Most people are frustrated they can’t share their thoughts in any other method,” Kaplan said. “You really feel vulnerable having everyone hear. Spoken word is like therapy, but the therapy is the audience.”

Although the Sacrificial Poets hold competitions, Jacoby said he still thinks the most important part of poetry is having the opportunity to tell a story.

“If you don’t tell your story, somebody else will tell it for you,” Jacoby said. “I never want to be about the snaps and claps. What I just (wrote), people liked. I know that I touched somebody tonight, my words did something for them.”

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