Bay Area teen's ode to BART propels team to national slam poetry win
Corner seat, headphones on, notebook out. Eyes drift between the window and the page. Pen scratches paper as the train slides beneath the bay and into San Francisco.
By the time the train hums into 16th St. Station, high school senior Sehinne has scribbled some solid one-liners. Nothing's concrete, but she’s got the first rumblings of a concept or idea or phrase that could blossom from a wisp on the page into a poem.
the Bay is my siren
it pulls me in towards murky waters of Lake Merritt
and tells me I am in a spring
how can I leave the Bay when every good idea I've come up with was made on BART?
i jot down one-liners whispered to me upon my train stopping at 19th St.
Sehinne wrote these lines on BART. The poem that grew from them, titled “BART,” was the first to “break the nine barrier” at the 2025 Brave New Voices slam poetry festival, meaning every judge scored Sehinne's piece a nine or above. Sehinne’s group, Team Youth Speaks Bay Area, took home first place.
BART takes Sehinne from San Leandro to 16th St. Mission every week for her internship at Youth Speaks, a nonprofit in the Mission that gives young people space to unearth, develop, and amplify their voices. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey, and for Sehinne, the journey is where much of the work happens.
“Transit became something I started writing about when I realized I was always writing on it," she said. "BART has always given me a safe space to write and be inspired and be creative."
BART has been part of Sehinne’s life since she was young, riding into San Francisco to see family or to wander around the big Macy’s store downtown. In time, her BART trips became avenues to something more than a physical location.
Once she started high school, Sehinne began riding BART almost every day – to school, to thrifting in Berkeley, to her favorite museums in Oakland and San Francisco. Riding BART solo is a rite of passage for Bay Area kids like her, she said.
“The first time I took BART by myself was when I really knew I was starting to grow up,” she explained. “There are so many good life lessons you can learn just traveling around your region by yourself. It’s almost like a sense of pride you’re able to figure it all out.”
Besides, "Do you want all your plans to happen on your parents’ time, or do you want to get places on your own?” Sehinne chooses the latter. Always.
It wasn't until sophomore year that Sehinne began writing poetry, spurred by a class assignment asking: what does social justice mean to you? Her pen didn’t stop until the page was filled.
“My teacher was like, ‘Dang, you’re a poet,’ and I was like, meeee?” she recalled.
The many poems that followed this first piece consistently explores activism and social justice. It turns out writing is one of the best ways to release your frustration with the state of the world, Sehinne discovered.
The “BART” poem expresses some of those frustrations, centering her experience as a “lower middle class” kid in a region with staggering income inequality:
we are the protectors of a misrepresented region
BART is my protector
he picks me up at almost any type of night because he knows I am broker than a joker
and that $16 Uber is $15 above my price range
BART is misrepresented
people who claim they’re from the Bay but have never gone further east into Oakland than Los Pericos
and don't even imagine what the streets of the hundreds look like
try to tell me BART is dirty, BART is dangerous. ‘My son is 16 and hasn't rode on BART once.’
first of all, mmm, f--- you, do you think that your son is better than me because I've been riding BART since the 6th grade?
i'm sorry that my mother of four and nurse to 400,000 of Oakland does not have time to be my chauffeur
In the poem, Sehinne personifies BART as her “second uncle twice removed on my city’s side.” He’s reliable, a little eccentric, and always there for her.
“BART was made for people like me who were raised by their city,” she writes. “...he shows up late and he shows up loud, but he shows up for me always, and that just might be the most Bay thing about him.”
Bijou McDaniel, Youth Speaks Director of Narrative Change and Communications, said many Youth Speaks poets rely on public transit and, like Sehinne, have a strong emotional attachment to the transit systems that carry them.
“BART is such a literal connecting vehicle for our young people, especially as we’ve seen the demographics of San Francisco change and young people being pushed out to the different corners and edges of the Bay Area,” she said. “They’re still able to attend our programs and events...and I know without BART that wouldn’t be possible.”
Many Bay Area arts organizations believe it is critical to locate near public transit to ensure their spaces are accessible to artists and regionwide audiences, and many partner with BART through our BARTable program to co-promote riding transit to their venues.
In 2024, Youth Speaks served as a partner and judge for the BART Lines Teen Poetry Contest, which solicited works from local youth to appear in BART’s free Short Edition Story Dispensers. Through arts programming, BART’s Art Program and Communications department are working to amplify the voices of Bay Area young people. We understand that the words and ideas of young artists like Sehinne are building a roadmap for the future, one that is informed by lived experiences and culturally specific histories.
The “BART” poem came to Sehinne when she was in the planning stages for Brave New Voices, which was held this year in Wisconsin. She wanted to bring the Bay with her, and writing about her “second home” BART just made sense.
One of her favorite moments from the trip was finding out Team Bay Area made it to the finals while the group was eating in a local restaurant.
“We were screaming, and people were looking at us like we were crazy, you know, bringing that hyphy to Wisconsin,” she remembered. “They’re not used to it out there.”
Now in her last year of high school, Sehinne’s starting to think about life beyond the Bay. She’s found herself paying closer attention to those everyday scenes that stream by in the train windows.
“It being my senior year and all and not really knowing where I’ll end up, whenever I ride BART now it’s really just trying to capture a memory of everything see so I can take it with me everywhere I go,” she said.
"I hope you all start riding BART more often,” she said, addressing the region. “Maybe you’ll get inspired, too.”
Read more BART poems by young writers in BART’s short story dispensers and online at bart.gov/bartlines.