By Anya Markovitz, Year 10
The phrase “3, 2, 1 Speak!” is a tradition originating from poetry slams in Ottawa, Canada, before an artist begins a performance. The audience will put their fists in the air, count down 3, 2, 1 and say “speak!” at the same time to encourage the poet to speak their truth. The fist represents power, courage, and resilience. The “3, 2, 1” is the counting down to discovering your true identity, true voice, true self. This phrase was brought to LGB by Jamaal Jackson Rogers and Randy Kelly of “3, 2, 1 Speak!”, an organization dedicated to helping students express themselves using poetry.
Jamaal and Randy, since 2014, have been visiting schools internationally with a series of poetry workshops they created to help students find their voice and self expression through spoken word poetry and cinepoetry. They encourage students to share their stories and truths to empower them. So far they’ve visited countries such as India and Oman twice, Poland, Chile, and now, Switzerland.
The poetry workshops they have been holding with year 10s over the past week have not only taught the students about spoken word, but about cinepoetry as well. Cinepoetry, as described by Randy Kelly, has its own language and tools used to help convey emotions and ideas. Cinepoems are trying to visually convey a message in a poetic way, just as a poem would, which is when all the tools of cinema, such as music, focus, lighting, pacing, and imagery all come into play.
Jamaal and Randy work with the year 10s for a specific reason: they’re hard to crack. Jamaal explains that working with grade 10 is interesting because they’re not as immature as grade 9 but not as willing to share as grade 11 or 12. They’re searching for the breakthrough moment with the truth that the students work to achieve. Jamaal says “Grade tens are in that space where they want to discover things about themselves but they’re not fully confident about it yet. I personally like working with grade tens because when they finally crack, it’s beautiful.” For them, exchanging their craft with young students is their form of arts education.
The two poets are arts educators, and their goal with these poetry workshops is to get people to understand the art form of poetry. Not only do they hope to help students, but they want them to be comfortable and accepting of who they are. “Sometimes writing things out about their visions, about their hopes and fears can help people understand themselves better” says Randy. Much of poetry, says Jamaal, is about self discovery, and it’s liberating to explore your hopes, dreams, fears, and identity. The duo offer the poetry workshops to young people because they consider this the time when their minds are the most impressionable. “Our goal is not to make everyone a poet when we visit them, our goal is to make sure they know they have a gift of expression inside of them, and we want them to hopefully discover this through the literary art form of spoken word.
Jamaal is a full time artist as a professional poet, and as the poet laureate of Ottawa, he is kept busy through performances, commissions, and writing. Not only does he work with students internationally to help express themselves through poetry, but he also owns a performing art venue where he runs workshops and poetry slams as well as a poetry retreat as a getaway for those interested in the art.
Randy works in film intelligence, writing poetry on the side since he was 15. Using tools of cinepoetry, he creates visuals for poets in Ottawa. Along with Jamaal, visiting schools helps them to create art as well.
