Zora Howard: High School Senior, Slam Poet, and Youth Poet Laureate
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By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 01/27/2010
Between homework and hanging with her friends, high school senior Zora Howard now fits the role of New York City’s first Youth Poet Laureate into her busy life. We caught up with this 16-year-old, who performs her poetry with such passion about everything from biracial hair to her grandmother’s throat cancer, to ask why the world should listen closely to its young people and how this student at Fiorello H. La Guardia High School plans to help.
How did you become New York City’s first Youth Poet Laureate?
I have been a long time member of [youth and arts program] Urban Word NYC and have been doing performances with them since I was 13. So someone from the office called me and said this was a cool opportunity. We had to send a resume, information about our community work and a portfolio of poems. From the pile, they narrowed it to 12 finalists, and the finalists had to slam—a competition of spoken word. That was October 16th, and I slammed and won.
Why's there a need for a Youth Poet Laureate?
The Youth Poet Laureate is the poet that basically represents the city to encourage civic engagement and action in younger people. So I get to develop and create some of this myself. I have the license to make this what I want it to be. Besides going to community centers and schools and sharing my poetry, I give them the message that it’s important to get involved. But the most important thing for me, other than the honor, is the fact that somebody had the realization that it was a good time to create a youth position. I’m so humbled to be starting out, to get this project moving, and I can’t wait to see where it goes.
Do you think young people need encouraging to use their voice?
I’ve had the privileged of growing up around fellow artists, so I’ve never felt out of place sharing. But that’s not the only community I’m involved in. When I come uptown, it’s a whole different thing. I’ll be speaking to my friends, and they have a lot of things to say. And they’ll talk to me, because I’m their friend. But when it’s something they want to change, or speak up, they’ll back down away from that. I feel like a lot of times young people speak about certain things, and older people look at it as that’s just a young person complaining, ranting, and just talking their talk. So there’s not a lot of listening going on.
It may not be that young people are afraid of using their voice. We could scream at the top of our lungs, but if no one is listening we might as well be silent. And then we may say, ‘I may as well not do it.’ It becomes an apathetic thing.
How does it feel when you’re performing your work?
Every time I perform, it hits me afresh how powerful my words can be for someone else. You’ve done it a million or two times, for a group of young people, and this is nothing new for them. Then you get the one student or person who looks you right in the eye and they tell you what your words just did for them. When you write from a real place, it’s a personal place. You might think it’s a really specific story. But something you say will resonate with somebody else, and you don’t know how it does, but it gets through.
Have you always been a poet?
I do believe it was inside me. My family has always impressed upon me that I have a voice, and taught me to use it. If it’s my mother telling me in the first grade, you need to raise your hand and speak up, they’re always telling me to make sure you use your voice. I think where the poetry came from, for me, was I always liked to write down things that I saw, and tell these stories in my own way. I’ve been involved in the theater world from a very young age, but I always felt the need to have something to make my own. I wanted to speak my own word, and tell my own story. It started as a very private thing, I had a book with my own writing, and then I started to share them with people.
Do you think a Youth Poet Laureate is a better voice for young people than an adult?
No one is trying to say adults don’t get through. And we’re still young and sometimes need the validation, people who have had the experience to say, ‘Keep on doing that.’ But when we’re talking about the youth experience, that’s something about here and now. And if you’re not a youth member here and now, that’s something you’re just detached from. No one is saying you didn’t go through that, but we’re going through this right now. We’re writing poems every day, and we’re going to keep using our words. We’re coming.
