Snaps and hums fill the air with shoes drumming and team spirit chants echoed as teenagers from across Nebraska take the stage. On April 14, 2026, The Venue Event Center in Omaha hosted the first semifinals round for the All Writes Reserved Festival. Sponsored by the Nebraska Writers’ Collective, the competition is a month-long tournament that hosts Nebraska high school slam poetry teams from Grand Island to Millard North.
A performance-heavy version of typically free-verse poetry, slam focuses on live delivery and personal expression, addressing topics like social justice and experiences with race, identity, and culture. Some performances feature elements of rap, hip-hop, or song, playing with vocals, articulation, and rhythm, and poems can even be choreographed to specific movements or gestures to emphasize meaning.
East’s slam team came into the festival this year with a reputation to keep, having won state for the first time last year with a team featuring one of five 2025 Nebraska State Youth Poet Laureate finalists. Alex Hamric, who was also a 2026 Laureate finalist, joined the team their junior year and was a major contributor in securing the state title, with their poem Lolita earning a near-perfect score. This year, Hamric came back with their twin, Willa Hamric, to the competition, and both achieved perfect scores on their individual poems in semifinals.
In a traditional slam bout, there are five rounds, the last one often being used for group pieces of two to four people performing a poem with lines interspersed between the different presenters. Poems are scored on a scale from 1-10 by five judges, with the highest and lowest ranks getting dropped, meaning that the highest score a team can receive for the bout is 150 points. At semifinals, East finished in first by a slim margin with 147.3 points, with Millard North coming in a close second .3 points behind. The stakes are higher this year, though, as East isn’t the only team with a Youth Poet Laureate finalist. Duchesne Academy features a finalist on their team, coming back after a previous hiatus from the tournament. Following the narrow finish at semis, East will go head-to-head with Duchesne at finals on April 28, 2026, at the Holland Center in Omaha.
“I feel really confident for finals, with all the poets we have on our team,” sophomore Emery Jobst explained.“I’d say our biggest competition is probably Duchesne, as I’ve heard they have some really amazing poets this year, but overall I think we have good chances at winning. All of our poets are extremely hard working and talented, and I think our past performances can attest to that.”
For most of the year, slam poetry is just another club at East. Meeting every Friday after school, students share writing prompts and collaborate on pieces, sometimes in preparation for competition season, which begins in late March. Auditions were held in February, and though some didn’t make the cut, the team still near-doubled in size from last year, going from six poets to the maximum number of 10. Otto, a key figure on the team and an officer in the club, explains how he’s enjoyed the team becoming increasingly popular.
“My favorite part about being on the slam team is the community, because you just meet some really cool people that you wouldn’t find in other spaces,” Otto said. Emery Jobst, another sophomore on the team, shares Otto’s sentiment.
“I really enjoy being able to grow as a writer alongside my friends,” Jobst said. “Almost everyone on the team is really supportive, as well as our coaches, so it has been a really good creative atmosphere.”
The process of taking a poem from page to stage can be extensive, so an encouraging atmosphere is a key ingredient in the recipe to success. After writing, poems often undergo peer review to help cut them down to the three-minute maximum for performance, and then are memorized and blocked, or choreographed.
“I try and write how I’m going to perform it, and I think a lot about how the words are going to hit the mic,” Otto said. “A lot of my stuff is more performance-based, and I just really enjoy slam because I feel like it’s helpful to build up my confidence a lot more and get me more comfortable with the stage.”
As the final round approaches, Lincoln East poets are memorizing on a deadline. It’s hard to match numbers to art, but Otto, Jobst, and others on the team will have to do their best to convince the judges to award the well-deserved 10s.
