Ten local high school students will take the stage at the Academy of Music on Saturday, April 5, at 7 p.m. to compete in the Third Annual Academy Regional Youth Poetry Slam. The event, a competition for young spoken word poets, is the only one of its kind in the Pioneer Valley.

The competitors were each nominated by adults in their lives last year, then whittled down to a group of 10. Last week, they participated in a workshop with event host and poet Imani Wallace, who also uses the stage name Lyrical Faith. Though there’s a lot of freedom with the subject matter of spoken-word poetry – “I have heard poems about the most intense warzone-related political situations down to poems about the flavor of vanilla,” Wallace said – the purpose of the workshop was, in part, to help the students ensure that they were getting their message across in the most impactful way possible.

Written poetry and spoken-word poetry have their differences – in the latter, Wallace said, “there is a commanding of the stage, there is a stage presence, there is some tone” – but also, young poets need to understand that, by performing personal work about heavy subjects on stage, they have “some type of power, some type of influence, and to not take that lightly.”

Debra J’Anthony, executive director of the Academy of Music, pointed out that slam poetry is a much more accessible extracurricular for high school students than others – team sports, for example, require uniforms and equipment; musical theater requires voice lessons and dance lessons. Spoken-word poetry, however, has a much lower barrier to entry.

“All we ask is that a student who is interested in this as an art form has a passion and they are dedicated,” said Wallace. “What it takes to get on that stage and compete will go a long way.”

The Regional Youth Poetry Slam will feature three rounds of competition: in the first round, all 10 students will perform a poem, then the panel of judges will score each one from one to 10. The six students who garner the most points will then compete in the second round, after which the competition pool will narrow again to just four students. (If necessary, the judges will also run a tiebreaker round, so the participating students need to be ready to perform four poems.) The audience is encouraged to join in, in a sense – they can cheer for the students and boo the judges if their preferred poet scores lower than they’d like.

Besides the pride of a win, the top three winners will each receive prize money, too – $250, $100, and $50, respectively. Of course, there are also non-monetary benefits to participating in a poetry slam, like conquering a fear of public speaking or taking a stand about an important issue.

“That takes a lot of effort,” Wallace said. “That takes a lot of building yourself up; it takes a lot of confidence and believing in yourself.” Students in the poetry slam, she said, “don’t come to play around. They come with serious business. They come having written serious poems that are so precious and so dear to their heart.”

The Academy’s Regional Youth Poetry Slam is now in its third year. Part of the inspiration to create it came from a group of enthusiastic students from Amherst-Pelham Regional High School’s poetry club who attended a slam at the Academy for adults a few years ago, during which, J’Anthony said, “They were basically sitting at the edge of their seats. When we opened it up to questions, their hands were up.”

Since then, J’Anthony said, the event’s staying power has come not only from “the students’ joy [about] poetry,” but also from a “resurgence of poetry in the world” as well as the relative accessibility of poetry as an art form.

In any case, she said, “We have some really amazing voices in the Pioneer Valley.”

The students competing in the Third Annual Academy Regional Youth Poetry Slam are: Allyson Klement, Amherst Regional High School; Zilaij’a Lewis, Holyoke High School (Dean Campus); Thanisha Martinez, Holyoke High School (Dean Campus); Melanie Rivas, Springfield Conservatory of the Arts; Maria Roblez, Holyoke High School (Dean Campus); Espin Santiago, Westfield High School; Adrianna Serrano-Rios, Holyoke High School (North Campus); Samara Thadison, Holyoke High School (Dean Campus); Izaria Thomas, Springfield Honors Academy; and Elias Vega, Holyoke High School (Dean Campus).

Tickets are $10, not including fees, at aomtheatre.com.

Carolyn Brown can be reached at cbrown@gazettenet.com.