Applied Poetics students after performing at the 80th Street Assisted Living Center

For the second year Bowery Arts and Science and Urban Word NYCco-produced the Summer Institute on Social Justice and Applied Poetics which is designed for young leaders, activists, poets, writers, emcees and scholars to engage the intersection between art, academics and activism.

The Summer Institute of Social Justice and Applied Poetics is composed of three workshops: ¡Revoliterature! The Poetry of Resistance & Change; Applied Poetics: Making Poetry Work, and Declare Yourself: Poetry & Social Justice Master Class & Performance Series. The workshops met once a week for two hours, over an sevet-week period in the summer of 2008.

Master Class poets were Aracelis Girmay, Beau Sia, Amiri Barka, Celenna Glen, Sapphire, and Jared Paul.

BAS Managing Director, Gary Glazner taught the Applied Poetics Class which culminated in a performance for people living with Alzheimer’s disease at the 80 Street Assisted Living Center.

Applied poetics is a poetics of urgency, relation and application. This means that the study of poetry isn’t just about writing a well-crafted poem—it’s about how poets live through the poems they write. How poetry can be of use to the community.

The students were given instruction in reciting poetry, including projection, articulation, pacing of the recitation, dynamics, and how to bring out the
emotional content of the poem.