Slam poet Gayle Danley shares an embarrassing story with the students of the Middle Grades Partnership in Baltimore. Danley will visit Wilde Lake Middle School in Columbia this month. (photo by Heather Cassano)

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.
“I’d never seen poetry expressed with so much passion and fire,” Danley said. She ended up writing a poem of her own, entitled “If I Were a Man,” performing it at a festival later that week and winning the competition. “I knew (then) I had found something special. I didn’t even know I was looking for something, but there it was,” she said.
Danley went on to perform at a bookstore, where someone told her that she should perform at the National Poetry Slam competition, held in August. She went and won that competition, too — despite having only learned about slam poetry three weeks prior.
Danley, now a Baltimore resident, will work with eighth-grade students for one week, starting Feb. 7, to teach students the art of slam poetry.
Her artist-in-residence stint culminates in a student performance Feb. 14, which will be held in conjunction with the school’s third annual Soul Food Feast three days later.
Coordinated by Wilde Lake’s Family Involvement Team, the feast will feature soul food-inspired dishes prepared by Wilde Lake families.
Wilde Lake English instructional team leader Brett Lebowitz met Danley when she was working at another school, and thought Wilde Lake would be “perfect for an experience like Gayle,” Lebowitz said. “She’s very real and passionate about writing, has a way of reaching the kids, and they use what they learn throughout the year to construct poems.”

Giving students a voice
Danley said she enjoys working with students because “they’re not jaded yet. They’re not afraid yet. They’re still malleable; they’re still open. Many of them are still learning the rules of writing … so they haven’t gotten stuck in what is right and what is wrong.”
Additionally, Danley said, slam poetry gives students a voice and lets them be heard.
“It’s an outrageous, honest art form, and it’s a way to be honest in front of yourself and your crowd,” she said. “It’s a way of giving yourself muscle. You feel real strong once you’ve spoken your truth.”
This is the second year Wilde Lake is hosting Danley. Lebowitz said the students really responded to her last year.
“She’s an altogether awesome person and performer,” Lebowitz said. “She’s quite real in terms of her poetry” and includes her experiences of being a single mom and in tough relationships, she said.
Each of the eight eighth-grade classes will have four sessions with Danley.
“I feel this round of visits, I will be more tender, humble and more willing to reason,” Danley said, since she recently lost people close to her. “They’re catching me at a good time.”
Other Artists-in-Education Grant recipients and their artists include Dunloggin Middle School, history residency with Mary Ann Jung; Glenwood Middle School, Shakespeare residency with the Maryland Shakespeare Festival; Harpers Choice Middle School, Shakespeare residency with the Maryland Shakespeare Festival; Hollifield Station Elementary School, visual art residency with Jing-Jy Chen; Longfellow Elementary School, performance by ventriloquist and puppeteer Tom Crowl; Northfield Elementary School, world music residency with Nada Brahma; Waterloo Elementary School, found object and recycling art residency with Karen O’Dowd; and, West Friendship Elementary School, Asian arts residency with Jing-Jy Chen.Wilde Lake Middle School to get visit from slam poet