The BreakBeat Poets

March 15, 2015
Chicago poet Coval (Schtick, 2013), the founder of the largest teen poetry slam in the country, Louder than A Bomb, teams up with fellow Chicago hip-hop aficionados and poets Quraysh Ali Lansana (The Walmart Republic, 2014) and Nate Marshall to create the first definitive anthology of poems by poets who fuse together the aesthetic of hip-hop and the style of slam poetry with the written-word tradition. Coval and company have even coined a term to describe this group of more than 70 poets born between 1961 and 1999, The BreakBeat Poets. With a strong belief in social change through the arts, the editors trace the evolution of poetry in hip-hop culture and present multi-literate hip-hop centric voices that capture the vernacular of the times. Even as they attempt to narrow and define this vital genre, the refreshing plurality and range of the contributors expands the very concept of BreakBeat. Here are mainstays Tara Betts, Marty McConnell, Willie Perdomo, and Samantha Thornhill as well as newcomers Malcolm London, Ocean Vuong, and Jamila Woods, all powering this dynamic, groundbreaking, genre-merging volume.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)