“What’s good, Parker?” poet Kevin Coval asks as he walks onto the stage. Standing under a single spotlight on the stage in the auditorium, Coval looks out, his face hidden behind the shadow cast from his flat-brimmed black baseball cap. As he reads his poem “How to Teach Poetry in Chicago Public schools,” Coval’s voice fills every inch of space in the room.

On May 26, Coval led a writing workshop for Parker’s eighth grade, as well as the upper school’s slam poets and a number of other interested upper school student poets and teachers, and he presented to the entire school some of his newest poems in a Morning Ex. He focused on his latest collection of poetry, “A People’s History of Chicago,” which contains 77 poems–one for every neighborhood area of Chicago.  

Among others, junior Natalie Braye is featured on the cover of Coval’s book in a photograph in which she leads a Black Lives Matter Youth protest in Chicago over the summer. “I didn’t know I was going to be on the cover,” Braye said. “He tweeted it out and then Chloe Wagner actually tagged me in it.  It was surreal after everything that happened over the summer.  I didn’t think anything else would happen–but then it did. I was freaking out but really thankful and so excited.”

Coval, one of the familiar faces of poetry–especially slam and youth and Chicago poetry–today, defines himself as a poet, educator, and organizer. Instead of ballads and epics that go on for pages, Coval focuses on a newer genre of poetry: slam. In 2000, Coval along with Young Chicago Authors (YCA), helped found “Louder Than A Bomb,” a slam poetry competition that Parker’s slam poetry team has attended for seven years.

English teacher and faculty advisor for Parker’s slam poetry team David Fuder met Coval through the competition. “As a slam poetry coach, we have meetings where he runs things with coaches, so I’ve known him for a number of years,” Fuder said. “When his book was coming out, there was a request that was sent to all the people that were connected with Young Chicago Author on if we were interested in Kevin Coval coming to talk about the book.”

Louder Than A Bomb was founded on the notion that the competition could become a space for students to share the stories of their lives in a meaningful manner. “The work that we do at Louder Than A Bomb is rooted in a very simple idea: that all of us, regardless of who we are and where we come from, we have an essential story to tell,” Coval said. “And if you don’t do the work to tell your own story, we’ve seen time and again that history and the folks who tend to write history are going to lie about you.”

Braye, who has competed at LTAB with Parker, sees just how much storytelling is a part of Coval’s writing. “It’s storytelling but in a different way–especially in the way he performs it,” Braye said. “One of my favorite poems in the book is the one about ‘Chief Keef’s Epiphany at Lollapalooza’ because it’s so simple but so powerful at the same time. I really want to emulate that in my own writing.”

Parker’s slam poetry team opens up new writing opportunities for students away from the classroom. “I think it gives kids another outlet for creative writing,” Fuder said.  “There’s no grade attached to this–it’s just what kids want it to be.  It’s a chance for them to express what’s going on inside them and what’s going on in their worlds. And to do it in a place that’s safe and respectful to their ideas. Not to say that a classroom isn’t, but it’s a more intimate space for kids to step in beyond what they’re able to do in a classroom setting.”

Coval grew up here in Chicago in the New Town neighborhood. He attended Anshe Emet for grade school until moving to the suburbs for high school. Despite living away from the city, Coval frequently rode the trains to visit his aunt at Second City and his father at the Maxwell Street Market. “Being at Maxwell Street is where I really fell in love with the city as an 11 or 12 year old,” Coval said. “You got to see so many different characters, and business happenings, and some of it was legal and some of it was illegal. You really got to see really incredible fabrics of different people.”

More than anything, Coval was inspired by the music Chicago offered him. “I went to high school in the suburbs, Glenbrook North and Northbrook, and because of the music, it kept me coming back to Chicago,” Coval said. “House music and hip hop, I went to house parties, and early beat boy battles and jams–thank god for the train. The metaphor even for the train and its ability to travel the length of the city more or less made me interested in learning about what all was there.”

Coval’s exploration of the city led to the inspiration for “A People’s History of Chicago.” The title of this book was inspired by historian Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” which Parker juniors read in US History.  “The beauty of Howard Zinn’s book is you will either love or hate it, but you’ll always learn from it,” Bigelow said. “The goal of his book is to make sure that all the different lenses and the different views and perspectives on the American identity, through the different stages of our history, are being considered and heard.”

Junior Maya Plotnick, who attended both the MX and the writing workshop, liked Coval’s Chicago focus. “I thought his approach to the structure of his book, with the different neighborhoods, was really unique,” Plotnick said.  “It kind of forces him to be diverse in his writing about different parts of the city.”

A major theme throughout all of Coval’s poetry is his exploration of communities and cultures other than his own. “I thought he did a really good job of that,” junior Anna Batdorff said after the writing workshop. “I thought that everything was very diverse.”

Coval’s poetry and teaching stem in part from his experience in his own high school classes. “In this order, the four books that saved my life were: ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X,’ ‘Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America,’ Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’– which inspired the book–and ‘The Black Poets: an anthology by Dudley Randall,’” Coval said. “There, for the first time in my life, I read poetry on the page that was called poetry that wasn’t done by dead white dudes getting lost in the forest. Because when I was in high school, all they taught me was, ‘Oh, here’s another dead white dude. Enjoy.’”

Coval feels that his mission to explore Chicago and the variety of voices it offers should not be limited to his own work. “We have to tell the story of the city in our own terms,” he said. “I think that’s on all of us. We have to also then be engaged in a process of listening to the city as a whole. Not just the north side or not just Lincoln Park, but the city in its totality. We have to not only be interested in hearing that story and in telling that story, but really being a part of the story to seek and hear from the different kind of polity that exists this city.”