Get Lit Rising: Words Ignite. Claim Your Poem. Claim Your Life. - Softcover

Lane, Diane Luby

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1582705771 ISBN 13: 9781582705774

Publisher: Simon Pulse, 2016

Synopsis

Get to know the Get Lit Players--a group of teens who use poetry to take on the world--with this standards-based book that sheds light on teen issues through their own poetry and slam poetry performances.

Get Lit Rising brings to life the true story of nineteen teen poets (the Get Lit Players) who are inspiring thousands of teens across the country through their award-winning performances of classic and spoken word poems. This book takes readers inside the private lives of these teen poets as they try to transform the lives of inner city teens in some of the toughest life circumstances. The Get Lit Players include teens who struggle with homelessness, autism, incarceration, body image, depression, and more. But they use the power of poetry to reclaim their lives and influence their friends, families, and communities.

This uplifting book also offers the classic poems that have most inspired the Get Lit Players, along with their own personal response poems, and each chapter offers questions, writing prompts, and how-tos for readers to set their own inner poet free. Ending with a section for parents and educators featuring the curriculum that's already in schools throughout California, this slam-dunk shows how to get teens excited about poetry and how to create poetry groups and slams in their own communities.

About this title

Review:

Poetry-lovers, cool cats, friends of youth, teachers, secret writers, anyone suffering any kind of gloom or remorse or longing for your own voice to be stronger... stand in line to buy this book! Get Lit Rising by Diane Luby Lane and her gorgeous Get Lit Players is the most passionate, brilliant testament to poetry and its wide radiance that I have seen in years. This is a book borne from the hearts, souls, and minds of many, an encouragement toward true connection and modeling on what you respect... a shining lamp to light your way.--NAOMI SHIHAB NYE, Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets

Get Lit Rising is a moving testament to the deep currents of creativity and compassion that flow in the souls of all young people. Too often these currents are silted up by lack of opportunity at home and school. This marvelous bounty of personal stories, inspired poems, and practical advice reveals (again) how heartfelt experience of the arts in education can transform, ennoble, and even save young lives. It shows too how helping young people to engage more deeply with the world within them opens them up to more profound relationships with those around them: how poetry and passion can nurture compassion. A beautiful, inspiring and important book for young people everywhere and for their parents and teachers too.--KEN ROBINSON, educator and author, Creative Schools: Revolutionizing Education From The Ground Up

Get Lit Rising is more than a poetry anthology. It is an astonishing window into what it means to be a young person in America right now. As such, it is also a mirror, and I can't think of a more meaningful reading experience.--JEFF HOBBS, New York Times bestselling author of The Short & Tragic Life of Robert Peace

The Get Lit Players are changing the landscape of literacy in Los Angeles and providing a model for the rest of the nation. Through the power of art, they are transforming the lives of young people and creating a pathway for opportunity.--ERIC GARCETTI, mayor of Los Angeles

Get Lit is one of the premier spoken word organizations in the country for young people. The words in this book are fearless, powerful, and moving. These are young poets in conversation with history, while writing their own. This is poetry for the real world.--George Watsky, author, rapper and poet

Personal essays and poems from 19 teenage poets, members of a poetry troupe connected with the Get Lit-Words Ignite literacy organization, are featured in this moving anthology. The young poets discuss their lives in candid essays and identify classic poems (from the likes of Charles Bukowski, Langston Hughes, and Marge Piercy) that they have found inspiring. The poets then follow the poems they have selected with their own "response" poems, which frequently touch on gender identity, mental health, body image, and violence. After each entry, Lane, who founded Get Lit, provides questions for readers to consider and prompts to jump-start their writing ("Write about a fight you're fighting within yourself"). Lane and her young collaborators present an inspiring example of how poetry in the present communicates with that of the past. Ages 12-up.--Publishers Weekly (September 5, 2016)

The power of Get Lit Players is not just the poems they've mastered from Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda, but their own stories, images, fears, thoughts, visions, and hopes. How they've used singular unique personas and combined them with others to create a dance of words, emotions, ideas.... This is transformative the way poetry should be--from the soul of a person to the soul of the world.--LUIS RODRIGUEZ, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles

This just isn't a book. It's a movement. It's a revolution. By giving these young artists a voice, Get Lit is giving these artists the power of their lives. It captures something very special. It captures the creative spark. It gives one a window not only to the soul of a poet by bringing a well known artist's words to the pages, but it elicits our own creativity as we journey with these young poets and their own artistic inspirations with their own powerful phrase. It awakes in the reader the joy and power of our words. We sometimes forget the power of a word. A word can cut out our heart. A word can unite a generation. A word can save a life. Now, the same power of the spoken word is given to any reader who picks up this book. After I read [Get Lit Rising], I recognized the power of my words to ignite real change.--RORY PULLENS, executive director of the Arts for LAUSD

Nineteen members of a culturally diverse student poetry troupe each share their personal stories, classic poems that have inspired their writing, and a poem written specifically in response to the classic poetry selection. Get Lit was founded on the principle that reading and using classic poems as inspiration for writing new poetry produces "magic, time and time again." This volume aims to share this formula with those who may not be able to attend Get Lit events. Participants' autobiographical essays showcase a range of personal struggles that include familial pressures to be perfect, shattered family dynamics, and bullying, and the book stresses that poetry can be a means of overcoming obstacles. Both the essays and the poetry selections are often emotionally raw, as troupe members explore personal pain and find hope for the future through writing. While the work showcases the fears of a young generation, the pieces also frequently call for self-acceptance, personal empowerment, and social justice. The suggested poems for additional reading are helpful for poetry novices and fanatics alike. The writing prompts included with each chapter are potentially useful, but they also could give the text a "workbook" feel that may alienate some readers. Useful for both those looking to run a poetry-writing workshop or readers looking specifically for advice with their own writing. (Poetry/nonfiction. 12-18)
--Kirkus Reviews (August 15, 2016)

This book, this fierce and hungry and gorgeous book, this good weapon in the good fight, this monster under the king's bed. No other book allows you to meet the poets, the youth, the creators of our future, like this one. Not only are we being let in to the art of these young writers, but we are also learning their backstories, which are as poetic and stunning as the poems themselves. This anthology creates constant conversation and dialogue across all borders, and I know few things more healing and necessary.--ANDREA GIBSON, award-winning poet and activist

About the Author:

Diane Luby Lane is the founder and executive director of Get Lit-Words Ignite, a Los Angeles-based arts education nonprofit that is transforming the landscape of teen literacy by empowering new generations in literature, self-expression, and performing arts. She is also the founder of the Get Lit Players, an award-winning classic teen poetry troupe that has collaborated with the United Nations, Dove, and Women in the World, and toured at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and the White House, and more, igniting communities across the globe with art and social consciousness. Lane is also the founding producer of Get Lit's Classic Slam, the largest youth classic poetry festival in the world. Lane's Lit Kit, a standards based, in-school curriculum, has been adopted by schools throughout the U.S. and internationally. She is the author of Words of Women (Samuel French) as well as the playwright and star of the critically acclaimed one-woman show Deep Sea Diving (also known as Born Feet First) which toured with iconic Chicano poet and author Jimmy Santiago Baca. Lane is a graduate of the Annenberg Foundation's Alchemy + Leadership Program, a TedX speaker, a Southern California Leadership Network Fellow, a member of Mayor Eric Garcetti's Poet Laureate Committee, and a recipient of the Presidential Lifetime Service Award. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

The Get Lit Players are an award-winning classic teen poetry troupe selected from students in the Get Lit program. They perform annually for over 25,000 of their peers, igniting a passion for literacy and social consciousness in schools and communities across the globe. The GLPs have collaborated and performed with the United Nations, the White House, the Kennedy Center, and more. Join the Literary Riot at getlit.org.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon Pulse
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1582705771
• ISBN 13: 9781582705774
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272