 Here students learn writing and performance skills and have the opportunity to represent the city at Brave New Voices, the youth national poetry slam.Salinger began performing his poetry in the mid 1980s in and around Cleveland Ohio at venues such as the Pearl Road Auto Wrecking Junkstock festivals, created by Daniel Thompson, and Macs Backs paperbacks in the eclectic Coventry neighborhood.He gravitated into the poetry slam scene by default as it was just starting to take hold.