I'm a 17 year English teacher and I always loved English.

It was always my favorite subject.

As a student, I am enamored with the word, the written word.

It is everything.

It is the foundational building blocks of any civilization.

And it's the thing that it inspires.

It educates, it invokes, it angers.

It records the history of the human condition.

And one of the mediums that the written word does that in is poetry.

The Omari Hardwick Blew Up a Poetry Network is the largest youth program for the Jason Taylor Foundation, and primarily we serve high school students in multiple counties in South Florida.

The purpose of the program is to create a community, if you will.

A network is what we call it, where young people who like to write specifically in the art form of poetry have opportunities to do so.

We also do programs with elementary schools and middle schools in the form of poetry.

We are a a sponsor of the Urban Word National Youth Poet Laureate Competition, and it starts regionally first.

So we have our South Florida Youth Poet Laureate Competition, which chooses our representative for South Florida.

And then they go on to compete to become the National Youth Poet Laureate.

We also have our our very beloved Louder Than a Bomb Florida poetry festival that features poetry from students, from teachers, from alumni, from our programs all throughout the month of April, which is the National Poetry Month.

Most of the students that join are members of either their high school's literary club or poetry club.

There are a teacher, a sponsor, but to us we call them a coach.

And so there would be these coaches at these particular high schools, and they will meet weekly at least one hour per week.

In those particular meetings, they will read poetry, write poetry, create poetry, study poetry, and learn their voices and their styles and their aesthetics.

What the Blue Apple Poetry Network does is that we foster opportunities for those clubs to get together, for those students to interact with one another, to share each other's art forms.

One of our missions is that we foster safe spaces so that these young people can actually express themselves with not only their peers, but an audience that is going to appreciate the work that they've produced.

I first encountered Blue Apple Poetry Network when I was in high school.

I was just trying to find my, like, click, as you say, and I was more of a like, wanderer, kind of drifting.

And I stumbled upon poetry club.

So from the beginning, I think in like 2015 when Blue Apple started my school Mcfatter Go Storm start participating in the poetry competitions, which made me go to poetry club after school, made me hang out with a bunch of the same people writing their own poetry, and suddenly I'm going to open my Excel.

I'm excited to go to school, and it just really unearthed a passion for writing and my own voice.

The branch like dance and the wind flow with the breeze.

No.

I'm sorry, is here.

Never be still.

Just finding people who had an interest in me and hearing what I had to say.

I found a community that really positively reinforced me expressing myself.

What I've seen in this work is that young people who start off very timid, they may be they may consider themselves outcasts or the weird kids.

They might consider themselves a lone artist, meaning they think in their minds, no one does what I do, or no one will care what I write as they scribble in their notebooks.

And then once they become a part of this community, it is a huge transformation.

They become more outspoken.

They definitely become more interactional, both on a one on one level and in a group level.

They are extremely supportive of one another and more importantly, they learn they have a voice, that their voice matters, that their perspective matters.

It has done tremendous things for my mental health.

It just it helps me see that my emotions are a part of me, rather than this byproduct of my existence.

Poetry encourages you to work with your emotion, to almost like, grieve and mourn if they're negative emotions, and then even really soak in the positive emotions in your life as well, without just letting them glance by.

Realize you're way bigger than this moment and that your love is way bigger than your hate.

So hate when you need to.

And then cast it away.

Lay yourself down and wipe your own tears.

Open palms and crush your own face.

Whisper you are beloved.

(Shawntee) Once they stand in the presence of one stage, one mic, one poet using their voice with an audience that is there specifically to receive it.

It empowers them in a way that I don't know that other programs do.

The teaching artists are young adults who are in many cases alumni themselves, and they workshop with the students.

They have them hone their craft with doing specific skill driven workshops or thematic poetry.

They also work with them as far as team building is concerned, so that they feel like a community.

They work on their performative skills because specifically in poetry, we're working with the art form of spoken word poetry, which is a performative art form, and so they need to be able to not just write, but also emote and project those words when they are given the opportunity to speak.

So those teaching artists, who are usually poets themselves, are there to help them become better writers and better poets.

(Shaviah) Now, I just really hope put together with our other JTF staff all our productions, including Louder Than a Bomb, where sometimes I'm hosting, sometimes I'm the vault manager, sometimes I'm just making sure the kids have a friendly face to look at when, before they go out on stage, and just being able to give back in that capacity has been so rewarding for me.

Not only did I get to find my voice with the Blue Apple Poetry Network, I get to help other students find their voice as well.

(Shawntee) Some of the things that I think keep people away from poetry is they say, well, I don't get it.

I don't get it.

Well, what happens when you look at a painting that doesn't have concrete objects on it?

Does it still not speak to you?

Poetry does the same thing.

And so to teach young people to not only be able to like, appreciate that, but to create is, in my opinion, adding them to the legacy of scribes who record the human condition.

When you hear the young people say this poetry on stage and their souls are being buried, or their truth is being spoken, it's one of those things that cannot be denied in the moment, and the artistry of it cannot be denied in the moment.

And you know that even if these words were on paper, they would still have the same impact.

So poetry, for me, is something that blends the thing that we all use, right, which is communication and artistry together.

And anyone can be a poet.

I'm a firm believer in that.