Fifteen teenagers from InsideOut Literary Arts will take the stage at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History on May 7 to perform original work and compete for a seat on InsideOut's 2026 Detroit Youth Performance Troupe. WDET's Metro program covered the event this week, interviewing two InsideOut staffers about the slam and the program that builds toward it.
The Detroit Youth Poetry Slam is hosted by La Shaun phoenix Moore, a performer and InsideOut coach. The 15 participants all come from Citywide Poets, InsideOut's afterschool program for teens. Winning means a spot on the 2026 Detroit Youth Performance Troupe, which carries intensive coaching and a calendar of future performance opportunities.
Jassmine Parks and Justin Rogers joined WDET for the Metro segment. Parks is a program coordinator at InsideOut and a 2021 Kresge Artist Fellow. Rogers manages Citywide Poets and is an alumnus of the program. He also designed the Detroit Youth Poetry Con, now in its fourth year.
Both Parks and Rogers came through the environment they're now running. That's a notable line of succession for a youth arts program. They told WDET what poetry has meant in their own lives and how that shapes their work with the current class of teens. The conversation kept returning to a direct question: what does it look like when young people are actually given space? The answer here is a public stage at the Wright Museum, not a classroom. People choose to drive there.
InsideOut has been operating in Detroit's schools and communities long enough that its alumni now hold staff roles. Rogers built the Detroit Youth Poetry Con four years ago. Parks won awards and a Kresge fellowship before joining staff. The students competing on May 7 are not the program's first class. They are walking into something with a record and two people on staff who are the evidence of it.
The Citywide Poets afterschool program runs through the school year. The slam is the event that closes the competitive cycle. Fifteen students perform. One troupe seat is the prize. The Wright Museum audience watches it happen in real time.
The format clarifies stakes in a way workshops do not. You perform. Someone earns the spot. But more practically, fifteen teenagers stand in front of a crowd and say something they made, and the crowd drove there to hear it. That compression does something to both sides of the room.
The Detroit Youth Poetry Slam is Thursday, May 7, at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Midtown. The museum is on Warren Avenue. The event is open to the public.
Two people on InsideOut's staff are evidence that the pipeline works. The teenagers walking into the Wright Museum next week are not starting from zero.
