POETRY: In motion or going through the motions: Anita Guidera meets the young Irish poets writing from personal experience and winning admirers around the world.

ext July, history will be made when a group of five Irish teens head to Atlanta, Georgia to represent their country in one of the world's biggest spoken world poetry festivals.

NLeaving Cert students, Lucy Fitzgerald (17) from Kerry, Iobhar Stokes (17) from Limerick and Neasa McCormack (17) from Clare as well as Ryan Mangan (19) from Galway and Mel Kavanagh (19) from Dublin will perform their own work before a live audience and team of judges at the Brave New Voices Poetry Slam.

They were selected following a nationwide competition, led by Stephen Murray, a poet and former slam poetry champion, whose mission to show students that poetry can be liberating and enjoyable when a modern touch is put to it, is taking him to secondary schools around the country.

"I believe that the poetry on the syllabus doesn't speak to teenagers. It doesn't engage their imagination. I work getting them to write from their personal experience and then perform what they have written and the responses have been spectacular."

This latest initiative comes on the crest of a wave of slam poetry that is engulfing the country and engaging a younger generation, that sometimes have not engaged well with the education system.