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Slam poetry
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A poetry slam is a competition at which poets read or recite original work (or, more rarely, that of others). These performances are then judged on a numeric scale by previously selected members of the audience.
History
Marc Smith is credited with starting the poetry slam at the Get Me High Lounge in Chicago in November 1984.
Discussion
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Encyclopedia
A poetry slam is a competition at which poets read or recite original work (or, more rarely, that of others). These performances are then judged on a numeric scale by previously selected members of the audience.
History
Marc Smith is credited with starting the poetry slam at the Get Me High Lounge in Chicago in November 1984. In July 1986, the slam moved to its permanent Chicago home, the Green Mill Jazz Club. In 1990, the first National Poetry Slam took place in Fort Mason, San Francisco, involving a team from Chicago, a team from San Francisco, and an individual poet from New York . As of 2008, the National Poetry Slam has grown and currently features approximately 80 certified teams each year, culminating in five days of competition..
Although American in origin, slams have spread all over the world, with slam scenes in Canada, Germany, Sweden, France, Austria, Switzerland, Nepal, the Netherlands, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the Czech Republic, Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Macedonia.
Format
At a poetry slam, members of the audience are chosen by an M.C. or host to act as judges for the event. After each poet performs, each judge awards a numeric score to that poem. Scores generally range between a low of zero and a high of ten. In the standardized slam, there will be five judges. The highest and lowest score are dropped, giving each performance a rating between zero and thirty points.
Before the competition begins, the host will often bring up a "sacrificial poet," which the judges will score in order to calibrate their judging.
A single round at a slam consists of performances by all eligible poets. Most slams last multiple rounds, and many involve the elimination of lower-scoring poets in successive rounds. A standard elimination rubric might run 8-4-2, with eight poets in the first round, four in the second, and two in the last. Some slams do not eliminate poets at all.
Props, costumes, and music are generally forbidden in slams. Additionally, most slams enforce a time limit of three minutes (and a grace period of ten seconds), after which a poet's score may be docked according to how long the poem exceeded the limit.
Competition types
In an "Open Slam," the most common slam type, competition is open to all who wish to compete. If there are more slammers than available time slots, competitors will often be chosen at random from the sign-up list.
In an "Invitational Slam," by contrast, only those invited to do so may compete.
A "Theme Slam" is one in which all performances must conform to a specified theme, genre, or formal constraint. Themes may include Nerd, Erotica, Queer, Improv, or other conceptual limitations. In theme slams, poets can sometimes be allowed to break "traditional" slam rules. For instance, they sometimes allow performance of work by another poet (e.g. the "Dead Poet Slam", in which all work must be by a deceased poet). They can also allow changes on the restrictions on costumes or props (e.g. the Swedish "Triathlon" slams that allow for a poet, musician, and dancer to all take the stage at the same time), changing the judging structure (e.g. having a specific guest judge at the Manchester Creatures of the Night slam), or changing the time limits (e.g. a "1-2-3" slam with three rounds of one minute, two minutes, and three minutes, respectively).
Although theme slams may seem restricting in nature, slam venues frequently use them to advocate participation by particular and perhaps underrepresented demographics. For example High School page poets only, or Women poets only may be allowed to participate in a particular slam, and thus it might encourage poets from those demographics to feel more confident in participating in a poetry slam for the first time.
Poetics
Poetry slams can feature a broad range of voices, styles, cultural traditions, and approaches to writing and performance.
Some poets are closely associated with the vocal delivery style found in hip-hop music and draw heavily on the tradition of dub poetry, a rhythmic and politicized genre belonging to black and particularly West Indian culture. Others employ an unrhyming narrative formula. Some use traditional theatric devices including shifting voices and tones, while others may recite an entire poem in ironic monotone. Some poets use nothing but their words to deliver a poem, while others stretch the boundaries of the format, tap-dancing or beatboxing or using highly-choreographed movements.
One of the goals of a poetry slam is to challenge the authority of anyone who claims absolute authority over literary value. No poet is beyond critique, as everyone is dependent upon the goodwill of the audience. Since only the poets with the best cumulative scores advance to the final round of the night, the structure assures that the audience gets to choose from whom they will hear more poetry. Audience members furthermore become part of each poem's presence, thus breaking down the barriers between poet/performer, critic, and audience. Bob Holman, a poetry activist and former slammaster of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, once called the movement "the democratization of verse." In a 2005, Holman was also quoted as saying:
Responses to slam
Slam has not been without its critics.
Populist responses to slam have included the Anti-Slam, begun at Collective:Unconscious on New York's Lower East Side. At an Anti-Slam, all forms of expression are given a six-minute set and all participants are given a perfect ten by the judges.
Academia has also responded to slam in various and contradictory ways. In an interview published in the Paris Review, literary critic Harold Bloom called the movement "the death of art." In response, poet and critic Victor D. Infante wrote in OC Weekly,
Despite the perceived animosity between the groups, a number of poets belong to both academia and slam:
Jeffrey McDaniel started as a slammer but has published several books and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College; Bob Holman founded the Nuyorican Poetry Slam has taught for years at the New School, Bard, Columbia and NYU; Craig Arnold won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition and has competed at slams; Sam Pierstorff created the ILL LIST Poetry Slam Invitational, is the Poet Laureate of Modesto, CA, and has published poems in various conventional journals; Ragan Fox, a Performance Studies professor at California State University, Long Beach, has been a finalist in the individual competition at the National Poetry Slam; and poet-novelist Douglas A. Martin was a founding member of the Athens, GA slam team, competing at the National Poetry Slam in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Portland, OR in the mid-90s. Poets and academics such as Michael Salinger, Felice Bell, Javon Johnson, Susan B. Anthony Somers-Willett, Robbie Q. Telfer, Phil West, Karyna McGlynn and Scott Dillard have devoted much attention to the merging of the poetry slam community and the academic community in their respective scholarly works.
A less successful attempt at crossover was that of Henry Taylor. Winner of the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, he competed in the 1997 National Poetry Slam as an individual and placed 75th out of 150.
Academics are not the only critics of slam. Poet and lead singer of King Missile John S. Hall has also long been a vocal opponent, taking issue with such factors as its inherently competitive nature and what he considers its lack of stylistic diversity. In his 2005 interview in Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, he recalls seeing his first slam, at the Nuyorican Poets Café:
Youth poetry slam movement
Slam poetry has found popularity as a form of self-expression among many teenagers. , a non-profit literary organization founded in 1996 by James Kass, serves as one of the largest youth poetry organizations in America, offering opportunities for youth ages 13-19 to express their ideas on paper and stage.
Another group offering opportunites in education and performance to teens is out of New York City, formerly known as Youth Speaks New York. URBAN WORD NYC holds the largest youth slam in NYC annually, with over 500 young people. The non-profit organization provides free workshops for inner-city youth ran by Hip-Hop poet and mentor, Michael Cirelli.
(YCA) provides workshops, mentoring, and competition opportunities to youth in the Chicago area. Every year YCA presents Louder Than A Bomb, the world's largest team-based youth slam and subject of a forthcoming documentary by the same name.
The youth poetry slam movement will be the focus of a documentary film series produced by HBO and released in 2009. It will feature poets from Youth Speaks, Urban Word, Louder than a Bomb and other related youth poetry slam organizations.
In a 2005 interview, one of slam's best known poets Saul Williams praised the youth poetry slam movement, explaining:
Bibliography
Miguel Algarin & Bob Holman, ALOUD: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe
Gary Mex Glazner, Poetry Slam
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam
Big Poppa E, The Wussy Boy Manifesto
Beau Sia, A Night Without Armor II: The Revenge
Daphne Gottlieb, Final Girl, Pelt, and Why Things Burn
Douglas A. Martin, In the Time of Assignments
Jeffrey McDaniel, Alibi School, The Forgiveness Parade, and The Splinter Factory
Taylor Mali, What Learning Leaves, and Top Secret Slam Strategies
Justin Chin, Bite Hard
Michael Salinger, Neon and Outspoken
Patricia Smith, Big Towns, Big Talk : Poems, Close to Death : Poems, and Life According to Motown
Ragan Fox, Heterophobia
Regie Gibson, Storms Beneath the Skin
Emanuel Xavier, Americano, and Bullets & Butterflies: queer spoken word poetry
See also
External links
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