By STEPHEN HAMMILL

Kwabena Dinizulu is a poet and storyteller, and he came to talk to 80 high school kids about something unusual to them: quietness.

“I want you each to take 15 minutes of your day and spend it alone, in your rooms,” he said. “Close the door. Turn off the computer. Disconnect the iPod. Be alone with your thoughts. That’s when you will hear your voice, because trying to think of nothing doesn’t work and then you will hear that voice. Listen to it.”
Dinizulu was visiting Chamberlain High School, 9401 N. Boulevard, to help with its annual poetry slam. He was on hand to give pointers, but also to give some inspiration.

“I’m giving the talks for the creative process – showing them how to find a topic,” he said. “The different tools and exercises help to expand their horizons.”
Dinizulu tours the city presenting original and traditional stories rooted in African and African-American folk tales and poems. His presentations focus on morality, the African value system and the African family/village structure at-large. He said teaching high-school-aged children what he knows about poetry amounts to a rite of passage.

“They want me to read their work,” he said. “I’m honored that they want to talk to me.”

A poetry slam is a competitive poetry event at which poets perform their own works, which are judged and often scored by members of the audience.
Janet Drake is Chamberlain High School’s media specialist and the coordinator of the annual poetry slam at the school. This year she had a portion of the library cordoned off and transformed it into a coffee house, complete with low lighting and a small stage.
There was barely room to fit the students and judges.

“I actually had to turn kids away this year,” Drake said. She decided to cap the program at 80 so everyone who wanted to perform would get his or her chance.

Drake has seen the impact self-expression is having on some of the students.

“They’re really giving their all and talking about what their lives are really about,” she said.

Dinizulu has been working with the Arts Council of Hillsborough County for 10 years and has been teaching in high schools for the last eight years. He is intent on reaching his students – to show them that writing poetry has less to do with meter or rhyme schemes than it does with taping into one’s inner voice. We all have one, he assured them; it is only a question of listening to it.

“Read one book a month – that’s 12 a year,” he said. “Reading someone else’s words will help you find your own.”

Dinizulu’s first three years doing this were spent exclusively at Hillsborough High School.

“After my third year, we expanded things,” he said. “I became part of the countywide poetry slam.”

As part of the program, each school sends its poetry-slam winner to compete in a countywide championship.

Venus Jones, a fellow poet and performer, was on hand to assist Dinizulu during the workshop portion of the poetry slam. She, like Dinizulu, works through the Arts Council of Hillsborough County. The program has grown over the years to include more poets like her.

“It’s become so popular,” Jones said. “They’ve asked more poets to help him.”

Before the slam began, the students were corralled into small groups to work on their verses together. Once their time was up, the students gathered to watch a video featuring some memorable slam readings of the past – a way for Dinizulu to pump up his audience. He gave them one last pep talk before the readings began.

“Am I too late for the readings,” asked a middle-aged woman, as she came running into the library. In fact, the poetry slam hadn’t started. The woman was directed into the makeshift performance space where she grabbed a seat close to the stage. This was a mother to two Chamberlain students; she had left work to see them both read – a kind of dedication that has not been lost on the teachers.

“I see students each year and I can see the growth, “Dinizulu said. “And these may be students not excelling in anything else, but they work all year for this moment. That’s what this is all about, baring your soul, getting naked.”

Indeed, the kids needed little coaxing from him or anyone else to participate in a poetry slam.

“They come ready for this,” Dinizulu said. “They want to show off. It’s a different generation. They’re exposed to MTV, BET, Def Poetry – these students volunteer.”

Drake said the kids often leave the teachers surprised and amazed with the wellspring of emotions and creativity lurking beneath the surface, waiting for an outlet. She said the school’s assistant principal is so impressed with the program that he is contemplating expanding it next year.
Once this year’s slam began, it was a rapid-fire procession. Some read from paper while others had the words memorized. Some stood in place while others gesticulated to stress certain syllables.

“That’s deep,” Dinizulu exclaimed, after one of the more heartfelt readings. Even other teachers got into the act. One current Chamberlain faculty member went up to the microphone to read a poem he had written about Dinizulu.

The first-place winner of this year’s poetry slam was Zhalarina Sanders, who, with her poem “I Wish,” chronicled the various stages of grief following a falling-out.

Remember last semester when I barely knew ya’ll?
I was just this Raven-lovin’ git that sat across from ya’ll.
And I swear I never thought it would turn into this,
‘cause it sucks so hard to be stuck on one wish.
That you know in your heart will never come true.
If I could find the right words and recite them to you.
God, please help me try to find a way through,
‘cause I’m tired of waiting to hear, “I love you too”.
I’m tired of calling people that don’t want to speak to me.
I’m tired of feeling like this has defeated me.

“That was …,” Dinizulu said.
“Deep,” the students responded.