The London Teenage Poetry SLAM in Chicago

A huge thank you

This Friday, four young London poets will board a plane for Chicago for a week of poetry, teaching, international sharing and inspiration. Representing the London Teenage Poetry SLAM, they will travel with their poet coaches, their poems and above all, the incredible support they have been given by teachers, poets and friends of the project on both sides of the Atlantic, to make this trip possible.

From left: Jennifer Perry, Jamal Msebele, Shelomoh Shaylah, Indigo Williams and poet coaches Sifundo and Miriam Nash.

The support for this year’s trip has literally blown my mind. One thing that stands out is Marty Cook, teacher at Kingsford Community School and longstanding ambassador for the project, raising $1007 by pledging to get his leg tattooed with a Chicago Bull, by a London tattoo artist who waived his fee to support the project. You can take a look at the result here. A huge, heartfelt thank you to the 31 people who contributed - I’ll be asking Marty if we can thank you individually up here.

An equally big thank you to everyone who contributed through our Crowdfunder pitch: Aditi Mehta, Dorothy Fryd, Hristo Guertchev, Jill Steinberg, Julia Gelpke, the Kahn family, Kristen Holtschlag, Mary and Norman Nash, Rachael O’Rourke, S. Rogelberg and Ng Yi-Sheng. And thanks to the many others who helped spread the word.

The trip would also not have been possible without support from Apples and Snakes, Kingsford Community School, Oak Park & River Forest High School and other Chicagoan schools. Peter Kahn in the US and Sifundo, Nick Makoha and Jacob Sam-La Rose in the UK have worked tirelessly to make this happen. 

So, when we board that plane we will not be travelling alone. Instead we are taking with us every single person who has contributed to the project, both financially and with their energy, enthusiasm, tattooing skills and belief in the power of poetry. Please come with us via the blog and see for yourself….