The Kickoff weekend went fantastic! With Louder Than a Bomb co-founder Kevin Coval, star of the Louder Than a Bomb documentary Lamar Jordan, and 2 more Chicago LTaB veterans, we went to Omaha South, Bellevue West, Duchesne, and Ralston High Schools to raise awareness and help students get ready!

Coval and Jordan then introduced a showing of the LTaB documentary at the OM Center in downtown Omaha and answered questions afterward to a packed audience.

Despite a snowstorm Friday night, the Chicago poets made it back downtown the next morning, as did a dozen high school students from around the Metro area and several of the team’s coaches and teachers for 4 hours of poetry writing workshops and an open mic.  It was great to have the poets in from Chicago and we look forward to more in our partnership with the folks who started Louder Than a Bomb and have been running with it for 12 years now!

On Friday, February 3rd and Saturday the 4th, Louder Than a Bomb co-founder, poet Kevin Coval, and one of the students starring in the Louder Than a Bomb documentary, Lamar Jorden are coming to town to visit schools, host a showing of the documentary, run workshops and host an open mic night. See all the details at the new Louder Than a Bomb: Omaha website: LTaBOmaha.com!

South High students did a tremendous job yesterday with their first ever poetry slam.  While hundreds of students watched, 11 competed in a poetry slam judged by members of the audience (including touring poets Joshua J. Ballard and Chris Rockwell from New Jersey’s poetry slam scene).  Principal Cara Riggs got the show rolling with a poem she wrote saluting her students, and, after a clearing poem by nationally-known poet Sean Patrick Mulroy, the poets let roll impressive works ranging from funny to heartbreaking to bizarre to beautiful.  South High students did a great job with their first ever poetry slam. While hundreds of students watched, 11 competed in a poetry slam judged by members of the audience (including touring poets Joshua J. Ballard and Chris Rockwell from New Jersey’s poetry slam scene). Principal Cara Riggs got the show rolling with a poem she wrote saluting her students and after a clearing poem by nationally-known poet Sean Patrick Mulroy, the poets let roll impressive works ranging from funny to heartbreaking to bizarre to beautiful. See this article from KVNO radio and this one in the 12/10/11 Omaha World-Herald.

The Nebraska Writers Collective helped all semester long, running workshops in Carol McClellan and other teacher’s classes with Gage Wallace and Matt Mason as well as local poet Ben Wenzl, Minneapolis poet Sam Cook, and touring poets Mindy Nettifee and Women of the World Poetry Slam champion Rachel McKibbens.

The Nebraska Writers Collective is bringing Louder Than a Bomb to Omaha!  After the great response to the documentary which showed at Film Streams in Omaha, we started work putting together a poetry slam which will pit local high schools against one another in a great festival of local teens showing their stuff in performance of their own original poems!  It’ll all happen in spring , 2012, and we are currently answering questions from interested schools in the Omaha/Lincoln/Council Bluffs/wherever-else-wants-to-come area!  Last year, Tulsa became the first non-Chicago city to put on a LTaB, Omaha will be the 2nd.

The NWC was proud to help out with last month’s Nebraska Book Festival, helping facilitate some additional sessions in the morning at NuVibe Coffee through volunteers and financial support.

We were also happy to help Campfire USA with their annual Pinot, Pigs & Poets fundraiser at the Happy Hollow Country Club last Friday night.  We provided poets to go with some great wines and pig cooked by the best in local chefs.  All for an intoxicating, delicious, lyrical kinda night.

Date: Friday, May 13^th

Time: 7-9:30pm

Location: 2016 S 185^th St. Omaha, NE 68130

Food: Wine/Beer and Appetizers/Desserts will be served

Entertainment: We’re very excited to announce that William Trowbridge, author of Ship of Fool, The Complete Book of Kong, Flickers, O Paradise, and Enter Dark Stranger has agreed to delight us with a brief reading.

The Nebraska Writers Collective is a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicating to the promotion of literacy and the literary arts. The board of directors would like to invite you to our spring fundraiser, the proceeds of which will help us continue and expand our work through such programs as Poets on Loan. Through Poets on Loan, we send teams of poets into the schools to work directly with students to promote literacy, creativity, and self-expression.  On May 13^th, we’ll be celebrating a successful year of Poets on Loan and its spring expansion into 3 additional area schools! We hope you’ll join us for a great evening!

If you’d like to attend (or simply donate), please click the donate button below.

The suggested minimum donation to attend the event is $30 per couple.

(This is an electronic copy of a letter to teachers about the 2011 NWC Youth Slam)

This year, in conjunction with the Great Plains Poetry Pile-Up (www.poetrymenu.com/gppp.html), which brings thirty of the most talented slam poets in the country to Nebraska for a weekend, the NWC will be sponsoring a youth poetry slam, which will happen at 2pm on April 16th, 2011 in Eppley Auditorium, Midland University, 900 N. Clarkson, Fremont, NE 68025, and we would like to invite your students to participate and/or attend. The slam is open to all high school students, and will happen between preliminary rounds of competition at the Pile-Up, which will happen

The winning student takes home a $100 cash prize, followed by $75 for second place, $50 for third, and $25 for fourth.

Admission and registration are both free, though there is a suggested $7 donation at the door (which will go to the Nebraska Writers Collective).

2010 was my first full year as Executive Director, and it was a joy to see some great new things started by the NWC.

Poets On Loan

Our main project is the Poets On Loan program which sends teams of poets into schools to work directly with students on goals such as a publication or public poetry events. While a number of our teaching poets are performance-minded, many others are academically trained. Their diversity helps to introduce students to the wide spectrum that is poetry today. It’s a way of helping students and teachers by bringing in energetic and talented poets to get them excited about poetry. And it’s also a program meant to help poets, as we work to pay our poets rather than ask them to work as volunteers. Too often, I’ve seen talented poets leave us to move to Denver or Chicago, so this is one small step in reversing that.
Poets On Loan is in place at 5 schools already: Westside Middle School, Ralston High School, Omaha Central, Lincoln High, and Abe Lincoln in Council Bluffs. We add Omaha Public Schools’ Integrated Learning Program this spring.

To keep adding schools, of course, we need help. We pay our poets, but we don’t charge the schools. Yes, I know, in a capitalistic culture, this is not the normal way things happen. But neither is writing rhyming couplets to explore our places in the universe, so what would you expect from an organization working mainly with poetry? True to our calling, we do our work and hope that people in our community such as yourselves can help us not only keep our mission going but help us expand.

Other Nebraska Writers Collective Programs

While Poets On Loan is our main focus, your contributions also help our other projects which include publishing local authors and bringing touring poets through our area. Recently, we helped publish Filling The Empty Room, an anthology of over 60 Nebraska and Iowa poets which came out from Morpo Press with our help and the help of the Seven Doctors Project in 2010. And this spring, we will help Creighton University bring the spoken word touring group Whirlwind Collective. We will also partner with Midland University to put on the 4th Great Plains Poetry Pile-Up, a poetry slam competition bringing in champion poets from around the country.

Give Today to Support Poetry

We support poetry and we support more people discovering poetry of all styles. In return, we ask that you support us by contributing to the Nebraska Writers Collective, a 501c3 nonprofit. A contribution as small as $20 can help bring an hour of hands-on poetry to a classroom full of students. In today’s economy, we take donations in half-hour increments too.

Please help by sending a check to the Nebraska Writers Collective, 9712 N 34th St, Omaha NE 68112.

All the best,
Matt Mason

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