SLAM! It's the First Annual Poetry Slam.

Helix Charter High School is one of, if not the only school in San Diego, that offers Seniors a Hip Hop Literature class as their senior English class.

There are actually multiple outlets at Helix where young poets can learn about hip hop and create their own poems. Students can join the Speech team, where they can write original poems and perform them in competitions at local and even national levels in an event called Original Prose Poetry.

Helix students can also join an after school poetry club called Movement BE, a club that is, according to Brayanna Monterrosa, “expanding the art of poetry through our voice, mind, and intellect.”

Brayanna, or Bray, Monterrosa, is one of the seniors involved with both Movement BE and the speech team, and for her Senior Project she threw the first ever Helix Poetry Slam Contest.

Monterrosa found her inspiration to do this project in the hip hop literature class. “Mr. Ginsberg's hip hop literature class reopened my eyes to poetry,” Monterrosa also said, “One day we had watched this documentary called, ‘Louder Than a Bomb,’ it was about these different slam teams from different schools preparing to compete in the state poetry slam competition. I wanted to do something like that because I knew it would be a project that I would enjoy doing.”

To complete her project, Bray had to “gather enough poets” so that there was enough for the competition, and she ended up with thirteen poets entered in the competition. She then had to, “maintain consistent, weekly, and productive practices after school to rehearse and write the 3 poems each poet needed for the competition.” And last, Monterrosa had to of course, “get ready for the show.” She made posters and flyers to advertise the event, and she also had ASB announce it in the bulletin.

Monterrosa’s slam couldn’t have been better. She asked one of Helix’s own, Trey “DJ Tarzan” O’Connell to DJ the event, and Bray also asked a few Helix Alum to perform a poem in between rounds, including Alex Salazar and Nate Howard, who founded Movement BE.

The semi final round was cut down to the top 6 poets, and the final round was comprised of the top 3 poets from the semi-finals round. After the final round, Bray announced the winner of the competition, Alyssa Salacup, who won the judges over with her poems titled, “6,” “Milk and Cookies,” and “Takes Missed.”

While the event was amazing, Monterrosa struggled during the process of getting her project together. She explained, “I had to share practice dates with another student, because we had similar projects and we shared a lot of the same poets who were involved in both of our events, and [the two events] were only a week and a half apart.” She continued,”during practices it would feel as if the other student controlled most of the practice and I barely had any authority.”

Despite the minor struggles that she had to overcome, Monterrosa got some great advice that helped her through the process. Monterossa recalled, “the best advice I got was from Mr. Rojas, the advisor of poetry club, he told me that he knows how stressful having an event is and relying on other people can be, especially if the event they’re involved in isn't a priority to them. He always told me that I need to remain positive and focused and work with what I got.”

With this advice, Bray carried out her project and, in the end, she explained, “the most rewarding part was seeing how many people showed up. I didn't expect the little theater to have almost all of it's 111 seats filled up. What was more rewarding was that the audience members were not just parents and family members, they were mostly students and friends of mine! That surprised me so much because having a younger audience hyped up the poets to perform better because it was their friends who were gonna watch them.”

After the whole experience, Monterrosa only had one wish for the future, “hopefully someone next year will do that as their senior project to make [holding a poetry slam] an annual thing.”