The words and feelings pouring out of Celestelle Webster, 19, and Christelle Roach, 18, on this sunny afternoon seem fiercely, startlingly beyond their years.

“The bones in my body are like needles in my skin ... I am a bomb, take shelter.”

Facing each other onstage in the small auditorium at the Miami Beach Regional Library, they summon a wrenching vision of domestic violence with lines they wrote together.

“Why are you still here? I’m in love with the arsonist ... There is a fire burning inside me.”

Webster and Roach’s verbal fire has been ignited by WordSpeak, a teenage spoken word poetry program run by Miami’s Tigertail Productions that will send them and five compatriots to a national poetry competition in July. Now in its ninth year, WordSpeak not only teaches young people the craft of articulating their feelings and ideas, but gives them a powerful sense of purpose, empowerment and responsibility.

“When a reader reads a poem, they give it their own interpretation,” says Webster. “When you perform your poem, you show them your interpretation of your piece ... What the truth is and how the world interprets a story are often different. We feel it’s our job to give clarity.”

The key to finding that clarity is WordSpeak coach Teo Castellanos, who negotiated drugs and gangs growing up in Carol City, Florida, before becoming an award-winning theater writer, director and teacher ― often to kids with a similarly fraught urban background. Conducting one of the team’s recent four-hour rehearsals, Castellanos shifts seamlessly between colloquial street slang and a relentlessly meticulous focus on language, rhythm, performance and meaning that would be challenging for an advanced college class.

“One of the first things I do is break these stereotypical habits and cliches and get them to be better writers,” says Castellanos. The team will need that discipline when they get to the Brave New Voices competition in Philadelphia this month, where they’ll compete with 500 of their peers from across the U.S. and abroad.

In rehearsal, Castellanos urges Roach and Webster not to forget “your intentions, your goals, your rhythms ... You’ll find the chaos ― it’s the hardest rhythm for most people.”

Then he summons Wesly Oviedo, Steffon Dixon and Al Alexandre.

“Better impress me! Let’s see what y’all got!”

Their poem is on gun murders and Florida’s stand-your-ground law, and the boys, who are African-American and Afro-Caribbean, take the subject personally, saying heatedly, “I feel like Florida is the gunshine state and I’m living in the bottom of the barrel.”

Castellanos proclaims himself pleased ― but pushes for improvement, suggesting changes in wording and a more dramatic performance, starting with a feeling of celebration so the shift to describing the murders will be more startling.

“Don’t fear going overboard,” he tells them. “The farther you go, the more dramatic the shift ― it’s gonna be crazy!”

Oviedo’s face brightens with anticipation.

“That flip’ll be sharp!”

Oviedo and his six compatriots were selected from approximately 1,000 South Florida teenagers who participate in WordSpeak and SpeakOut, its sister program for GLBTQ youth. The program features classes and workshops at 10 mostly inner-city high schools, visits from nationally known guest teachers such as Reggie Cabico, a Washington, D.C., writer and performer; and several poetry slams, or competitions, to choose the team.

By Jordan Levin

(The Miami Herald)

(MCT Information Services)