Above: Coach Tama Brisbane give some tips to Jasmine Gibson during a practice at Brisbane's Stockton home.

So, Tama, how was that trip to Washington, D.C.?

“It was just your average, everyday, run-of-the-mill life changing experience,” said an exasperated Tama Brisbane, reflecting on Reverb’s trip to the nation’s capitol. “I’m a poet, I’m not supposed to be lost for words.”

The coach of Stockton’s Reverb poetry troupe (the youth collective of With Our Words, a.k.a. W.O.W.), Brisbane led a group of seven young local poets to D.C. last month as they competed in Brave New Voices, an international poetry slam competition.

“I promised them they would not come back the same people, and I delivered on that promise,” Brisbane said.

The young wordsmiths (aged 16-19), some of whom had never before even left the state of California, were thrust into a collective of 450 other poets from all over the world, competing against the San Franciscos, the Los Angeleses, the New Yorks, and the Manchesters of the world.

Not bad for the Central Valley town that many folks at the competition had probably never even heard of.

“We’re all there just for the sheer love of what we do, and seeing spoken word poetry performed at its highest level; it was amazing watching seven kids from Stockton take their rightful place, and hearing people saying that Stockton might be the best kept secret in California,” said Brisbane, who watched three of her poets receive perfect 10’s in the competition (as you can imagine, that’s no small feat).

A few of those fresh faces may soon be seen on TV as well, as the Brave New Voices event was filmed for an upcoming six-part HBO documentary, scheduled to air in January.

But there’s no time to rest for Reverb; there’s a lot more on tap for the troupe here at home, as the popularity and exposure of spoken word poetry and of W.O.W. continues to grow at a frenetic pace.

W.O.W. will perform as part of a screening of the film “Committing Poetry in Times of War” on Sunday, August 10 at 4 p.m. at the Empire Theatre, 1825 Pacific Ave. Tickets are $5-$10. Producer Eric Sirotkin will also be on hand, and there will be an open mic session.

W.O.W. will be accepting applications at the event for Reverb’s fall workshops, which are open to any Stockton high school student free of charge.

There’s more: Following up on their recent fusion performance collaboration with the acclaimed chamber music outfit the Peabody Trio in April, members of W.O.W. are getting together with the Stockton Opera for a performance of “The Barber of Seville” on August 17. Stay tuned to 209Vibe.com for further details on that event.

As interest is on the rise and the size of the Reverb troupe swells, it would seem that spoken word and poetry slam events are a relatively new phenomenon.

Not so much. But, as more and more young people become active with poetry, the impact and social voracity of the medium continues to build steam.

“They’re taking back hip hop for one thing; they’re taking back the voice from hip hop and reinvesting in the story telling, and they are discovering the power they have to make an impact,” Brisbane said. Members of W.O.W. performed at the Talib Kweli show at University of the Pacific in March.

“When you do (poetry) creatively and effectively, people are going to listen,” she said. “This year more than any other year, youth voices have power. It’s the un-talked about swing vote in the election, and they’re conscious of that and they’re not afraid to use it.”

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