Wilde Lake Middle School to get visit from slam poet

Columbia Flier: School Days

By Lauren Rosenberg
lbrosenberg@patuxent.com

Posted 1/06/11

Gayle Danley only learned about slam poetry three weeks before winning a national competition in the art form some 16 years ago.

Now a well-known slam poet, Danley will be visiting Wilde Lake Middle School, in Columbia, as an artist in residence, thanks to an Artists-in-Education grant the school received from the Howard County Arts Council.
The program "places professional artists in residence at private and public K-12 schools to help students foster creative exploration," according to the Arts Council's website.

Danley learned about slam poetry in 1994 when she attended two shows of the Nuyorican Poets, who were performing in Atlanta, where she was living at the time.

Slam poetry is the competitive art of performance poetry and emphasizes both writing and performance, according to Poetry Slam Inc., the official nonprofit organization in charge of overseeing the international coalition of poetry slams.

To read more about this exciting program, please use this link: Explore Howard: Wilde Lake Middle School to get visit from slam poet