D.C. Slam Champion to Highlight Bergan Poetry Festival

As a member of the Beltway Poetry Team, 史密斯 represented DC at the 2012 National Poetry Slam. He also competed at the Individual World Poetry Slam championships in October and has been featured on TVOne’s premier poetry and music show, 诗句 & 流. 史密斯, 24, graduated from Davidson College, w在这里 he majored in English and founded FreeWord, a slam poetry team that he led to a top ten finish at the 2010 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. To view a sample of his work on YouTube, click 在这里.

After Davidson, Clint served as a cultural ambassador to Swaziland on behalf of the U.S. State Department, living in Soweto, South Africa. He worked to educate youth in the township on HIV/AIDS by engaging them in soccer and spoken word. 史密斯 also conducted poetry workshops around the country that focused on HIV/AIDS prevention, cross-cultural understanding, and self-empowerment.

史密斯 has appeared at the International AIDS Conference, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Conference, the Teach For America Regional Institute, the African 领导 Academy, and the School for International Training, the Johannesburg House of Hunger, and the Maun International Poetry.

In addition to the Friday evening celebration of performance poetry, the Foxcroft festival will feature a variety of more formal readings Saturday. Student from each grade level who have advanced through two rounds of readings, judged first by their peers and then by a panel of faculty members, will compete for in a formal poetry-reading event with roots in the early days of the nearly-century-old school. After those winners have been crowned, students and faculty will share favorite poems, in English and in a number of other languages. They will also lead original works.

A Foxcroft tradition, the Poetry Festival has brought famed poets of all styles to the Foxcroft’s Middleburg, VA, campus over the years. In 2007, it was renamed in honor of longtime English teacher Paul K. Bergan upon his retirement.