As a result of sophomore Hannah Hufana and senior Laira Biewer winning the 2025 Bernie Mac Comedy Award and Greyson Telander Brave Space Award for their individualized poems, the Niles West slam poetry team, A Tribe Called West, was invited to perform at the Rooted and Radical Finals Showcase on Sunday, March 16.
Slam poetry is a competitive performance art where students write and recite original poetry. Poets are judged based on delivery and emotional impact, as they present before an audience, with all lines required to be memorized.
“Tribe Called West just has a style that I don’t think a lot of other teams take really strongly, we try to focus on…creating stories that make you smile, make you think, make you maybe feel a little warm, make you laugh. If you’re gonna write a poem, at least try and bring light to someone’s day with it,” Biewer said.
Poets wrote their poems based on personal experiences to be delivered with emotional stage performances. The team reinforces a positive environment to amplify different types of slam poetry.
“Practicing with my team and coach helped me become more comfortable in sharing my story…and helped me realize that I was capable of being a good performer but I had to let myself just do it. I gave it my all and didn’t worry about what others thought,” sophomore Ghina Adam said.
The team’s season began in September, and every week the poets dedicated hours to practicing their craft and improving their writing and performing abilities.
“We prepare regularly by meeting on Saturday mornings, creating new material, work shopping material and rehearsing material,” sponsor of the slam poetry team and English teacher Paul Bellwoar said.
Biewer and Huafana exhibited their award-winning poems on Sunday; “Jerar” by Hufana and “Yana and the Turkey” by Biewer.
“Laira’s piece was straight-up good from beginning to end. But, to get back to Hannah, her performance really sealed the deal. So, it was a great, great honor to see them get recognized for all of the hard work they do,” Bellwoar said.
As they prepared for the finals showcase, team members strived for improvement and worked to perfect their performance.
“I’m focusing more on how to perform my piece. My voice isn’t very expressive, so in my own time, I try to think how fast I should perform this line, how high my voice should peak on that line, how I can sound frustrated at this part,” Hufana said.
