Tigertail WordSpeak Teens Return from LA

For the 6th year, Tigertail sent its WordSpeak spoken word teen team to compete in the prestigious Brave New Voices, a youth poetry festival, www.bravenewvoices.org. This year's festival was held in Los Angeles, CA, July 19-24, 2010, and included teens from 50 cities from across the country participating in workshops and readings with established poets and performers, open mikes, and the National Youth Poetry Slam, itself a competitive event. The Miami team, which includes a diverse range of some of South Florida's best young writers (out of more than 1000), was selected from participants in the local WordSpeak program sponsored by Tigertail. The six vibrant teens include Shamoyia Gardiner from North Miami Beach Senior, Wesley George from Coral Gables Senior, Diego Mosquera from Deerfield Beach High, Alejandra Nunez and Yarminiah Rosa from DASH, and Sandrina Seraphin from North Miami Senior.

This year, the Tigertail team made it as far as the semi-finals, missing the finals by only a small margin. In addition, team member Yarminiah Rosa was honored to be one of 12 finalists selected by Brave New Voices Speak Green, a project sponsored by Robert Redford. Yarminiah will attend Sundance in January, 2011.

Tigertail will publish a book containing the Miami team's poems, with a CD, in November. The cover will be by Miami-bred, LA-based artist Christian Meesey, who also created the wonderful drawings of the team at the top of this page.

Tigertail Productions' WordSpeak is an ongoing life-changing spoken word program for 1,000 inner city South Florida teens. WordSpeak events provide Miami teens, ages 13 to 19 years old, the opportunity to learn more about spoken word as a way to express themselves, in an appealing medium that blends poetry, theater and hip hop culture. In WordSpeak they develop their writing, speaking and performance skills and learn teamwork.

Each year WordSpeak brings in prominent writers from outside Florida for residencies that include school and community-based workshops, readings, and teen open mics and slam competitions.

Targeted support for WordSpeak and the Iyeoka Okoawo residency came from Alternate ROOTS C/APP program, Books & Books, The Children's Trust, E.S. Moore Family Foundation, Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Mayor and Board of County Commissioners, Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce, City of Miami Beach Cultural Affairs Program, Cultural Arts Council, Miami Dade Public Library, Miami Dade Public Schools, Miami River Inn, National Performance Network with major funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), Altria, MetLife Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation; and Publix Super Markets Charities.