Sweet Lorraine's Jazz Club, in the early morning hours. (Ray Tyler/NYT Institute)

In an art gallery tucked between a Caribbean restaurant and a full service laundry on a quiet street in Mid-City a group of teenagers and adults sat on the edges of their seats, full of anticipation.

“Are you ready for the word?” a man called out.

“Pass it on,” the crowd replied in unison.

A young man dressed in dark clothes and clenching a leather-bound notebook moved to take his place atop a soapbox.

“I have ‘AIDS’ No, I wasn’t raised this way. It’s something I picked up. My condition is different, I’ll explain in a minute,” the teen said, reading on for several minutes, the crowd clinging to his every word. “I have ‘AIDS’ — apparent influential disorder to speak.”

Following the poem’s conclusion, he stepped down from the soap box and, as tradition dictates, he tossed a penny in a jar. The crowd clapped, and the positive vibes carried him back to his seat.

The poet, Raheim Daniels, 16, was one of several to take the stage that night and share their words, their art. These poets, novices and veterans alike, are helping fuel the resurgence of the spoken-word poetry scene in New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina emptied the city, many of the established performance poets were scattered throughout the diaspora. Some of the city’s premier poetry venues were shuttered.

“We lost a lot of the greats,” said Shannon Pellet, a veteran of the New Orleans poetry scene who relocated to Chicago after the hurricane. “It’s just like any other family that scattered after the hurricane — we were the same. I lost my brothers and my sisters and poets that I looked to like second mammas and aunts.”

Gian Smith, aka G-Perspective, 31, co-host of Noyo Presents: "Pass It On," expresses the importance of the spoken word. (Ray Tyler/NYT Institute)

But now, as more poets and people who enjoy the art of spoken word are returning home, organizers said new venues that host poetry events are sprouting up all around the city.

“Eventually, people started to come back,” said Gian Smith, 31, whose stage name is G-Perspective. “As people start to come back, there has been more of a demand for poetry. People don’t just want poetry one night; they want it any night of the week that they want to have it.”

Smith, who was displaced after the storm, said he returned to New Orleans with a single purpose in mind.

“I came back to New Orleans after Katrina with the sole intention of doing what I could to help either salvage or restore or build the art that I knew and appreciated and loved,” he said. “Before Katrina, I always took this for granted. It wasn’t anything that I thought for a second, ‘oh, I won’t have this at my disposal,’ so I wasn’t as appreciate as I am of it now.”

Smith is now the co-host of “NOYO Presents: ‘Pass It On’ Open Mic” at the Red Star Galerie, an event that takes place every Saturday night.

The organizers felt it was important to showcase youth performances as well as seasoned adult performers, so they split the show into two parts.

“A lot of people come in early to hear the kids, and once they’ve performed, we’ll take an intermission, have a conversation topic we’ll discuss amongst the crowd, and then we’ll go into the adult portion of the show,” Smith said.

The shows have been particularly popular with teachers, who encourage their peers and students, like Daniels, to participate.

“It’s a great opportunity to be heard, and for other people around you to see what you have to bring to the table,” Daniels said. “With NOYO, I respect the fact they let the high school, younger crowd perform. I respect that a lot.”

Eric Couto, 18, another performer at the gallery that night, said the events following the hurricane inspired him to share his poetry with others.

“After Katrina, I started feeling bad, feeling sad, about what happened to our home,” Couto said. “I’d feel sad, angry, happy — so many emotions — and that’s when I started elaborating on them in my poetry. Spoken word puts me in a great place for those 5 or 10 that I’m performing, and that hour or two hours I’m watching everyone else perform.

“It’s like a safe haven,” he added. “It gives me a chance to breathe from all the stress I’ve been through.”

Local poets hanging out in front of Sweet Lorraine's Jazz Club in the early morning hours. (Ray Tyler/NYT Institute)

Across town and a few nights earlier inside Sweet Lorraine’s Jazz Club on St. Claude Avenue in the Marigny, the lights were dim and the air was thick with smoke. The din from the crowd of dozens that gathered there that night rose and settled in every corner of the place. Not far from the bustling bar, where patrons sipped cocktails under the watchful eye of a bartender, a woman stood on stage with her head bowed.

She lifted her head. Her eyes met the crowd. And she began to speak.

“While everyone wishes the tragedies of 9/11 had never happened, they are dying to see 9 and 11 again, ‘cuz when 10 and 12 struck, that was when 10-year-old Rodney would lose his best friend.”

The piece, performed by Pellet, who goes by the stage name Uncaged Bird, was a memoir about her two cousins, who at ages 10 and 12, witnessed the murder of their mother.

“Poetry is my expression,” she said. “The first time I performed that poem about my aunt, I just went outside and cried. It happened when I was 14, and for seven years I couldn’t even talk about it until finally at 21, I was finally able to get it out through spoken word.”

Pellet has been coming to Sweet Lorraine’s to enjoy spoken word for about six years.

“There’s a lot of history in that place,” she said of the club. “Just being around people who like the same things, who appreciate the same thing, it feels good. There’s not a night I don’t go to a poetry night and learn something or have my interest sparked.”

Shelton “Shakespear” Alexander, 34, has been the host of the weekly spoken word event at Sweet Lorraine’s since 2003.

Alexander also was displaced by the hurricane. He returned to New Orleans in February 2006.

“Once people found out I was back in the city, they started calling the club trying to find out if poetry was going to continue,” he said. “We’re keeping it going. I made sure I came back to New Orleans, and been committed to it.”

Alexander is considered a veteran within the spoken-word community, and said that he supports the next generation of poets filling the void left by those who are no longer on the scene.

“When I came back, a lot of the poets that were around when I started out stayed wherever they had relocated,” Alexander said. “They’ll come to visit, but haven’t come back totally. A lot of new artists are keeping it going. We wouldn’t really have a good spoken word scene if it wasn’t for the younger artists stepping up and getting it going again.”

Back at the Red Star Galerie, night had settled and the poets and most of the audience poured from the gallery and onto the sidewalk for intermission. The group quickly filled the quiet street with loud conversations that had been pent up during the first session.

Amid the greetings and laughter, the people began to gravitate toward one another, forming a circle beneath a streetlamp.

Poets took turns standing inside of the circle, free-styling, each line of prose met with steady cheers.

After about 5 minutes, the co-host of the night’s event appeared in the doorway.

“Are y’all ready for the word or what?” the man called out.

“Pass it on!” the group yelled back in unison before filing back into the gallery.