Graduation Day LA: Young writer finds home in poetry

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On a chilly night in South LA, over a hundred young people have packed into a small theatre for an open-mic poetry reading. Kenzie Givens is a seventeen-year-old African American poet, and tonight is her first time reading at this venue.

On stage, Kenzie looks tough—she’s dressed in a leather jacket, mini-skirt and combat boots and her hair is done up in dreads. Despite her confidence on stage, Kenzie doesn’t always fit in. She writes poetry because she often can’t connect with other students her age.

“When I’m at school I’m usually pretty shy,” Kenzie explains. “I have this little place where I sit off. It’s actually behind this little shrubbery thing—and that’s usually where I go and eat my lunch. If people are around me my head tends to be in a book.”

Kenzie doesn’t go to school in her own African American neighborhood. In the third grade, her parents chose to start sending her to charter schools in mostly white, wealthy neighborhoods. She felt like an outsider from an early age.

“As one of the only African American students, I definitely felt like an outsider. I tried to make friends with people and tried to ingratiate myself into different groups and stuff but I found out that in order to do that I’d have to be someone that I was not. And that didn’t appeal to me. So I just kind of decided to be stubborn, and stick it out alone.”

Kenzie’s neighborhood in South LA is over 70 percent African American. On the doors, signs read "Black Owned" and "Support the Hood." Her father Darren felt it was important to raise his children close to their roots.

“It was important for them to be in an environment where one, they would be safe," Darren said. "But (where) they’d be around their own people as well, able to go outside and play, drive around, participate in the neighborhood, go to their own stores, and different things.”

Caroline, Kenzie’s mother, is a teacher in an urban South Central school. She admits it was important to send Kenzie to a school that would prepare her for university, even though it was difficult sending her away.

“I would have liked her to have more African American friends, which I think she doesn’t have as many. Does she have any?" she asked her husband. "I don’t think she has any African American friends. No.”

Kenzie agrees it isn’t easy.

“I’m certain there’s someone at my school that I could have really great conversations with but I’m so focused on my books and exploring topics on my own, I never get to talk about it with anyone," Givens said. "I’ve never had a boyfriend, or maybe my boyfriend is a book, I’m not sure.”

As the final days of high school tick away, Kenzie finds ways of connecting with other poets. Recently, she started a poetry club at her high school; it isn’t popular, but its members are dedicated to the craft.

During this drizzly lunch period, four teenagers have assembled in a classroom to read their poems. There are no notebooks here, no scribbled journals. The students write and read their poems on their cell phone screens, their fingers scrolling their words. The poetry club members Edwin, Sophie and Daniel, all agree that poetry is misunderstood at their school.

“When you tell people you’re a poet, they think you’re all sad and depressed, when it really isn’t like that,” Daniel explains.

Kenzie expands on why poetry is so important to her.

“I write what feels most real at any moment. It can be any experience that is so moving that it demands to be written down," she said. "I think my biggest fear is probably a very common one, and that is of disappearing entirely. I‘d like to know that I mattered.”

On the night of her first reading, Kenzie’s nervousness melts away. She looks grounded, confident about her future. Next year she’s heading to Reed College in Portland, where’s she’s secured early admission and a scholarship. She is certain that the open environment at Reed will be accepting of her poetry, and of her identity.

Meanwhile, here, in this crowded theatre full of poets and performance artists, she’s no outsider. On stage, Kenzie Givens is at home.