Nearly three dozen student poets from Phoenix Military Academy shared their experiences with urban violence through a recent interactive performance at the Poetry Foundation in downtown Chicago.
The project is called “Just Yell: Poetry as Self Defense” and it’s the first in an ongoing series of publicly-engaged installation performances around issues of violence and Chicago’s youth. It was organized in collaboration with artist Cheryl Pope and the group, Project&.
“Representing an average Chicago Public School class size, the 32 young Chicago writers carve poems into the surface of school desks in this interactive installation,” according to a description of the event. “Students will invite viewers for a walk where they will share a spoken poem during an intimate one to one exchange.”
Photographer Max Herman covered the event for Catalyst.