Peter Kahn

Centennial High School students in Sarah Barry’s English class stood before their peers to read poems they worked on during the week. The class listened as each student shared their experience with loss, grief, hope, celebration, or a funny memory. This in-class poetry reading is part of a yearlong workshop led by Peter Kahn, an educator, poet, and project creator. Kahn has worked as an English teacher and a Spoken Word Educator at Oak Park/River Forest High School. He is the founding member of the London poetry collective Malika’s Kitchen, co-founded the London Teenage Poetry Slam, and has poems featured in the London Guardian and The Foward Book of Poetry.

When Peter Kahn became an English teacher at the Chicago-area Oak Park and River Forest High School, he was terrified of teaching poetry. "Poetry was my least favorite subject as a student, and my least favorite subject to teach as a teacher," he says. "I was terrible at it." So he asked a former student of his for help, who suggested the idea of a poetry slam — a competition in which poets perform spoken word poetry before a live audience.