To some people, poetry is something read quietly while in a garden sipping tea. To others, it is beatniks in berets speaking in halted voice to a finger-snapping audience. But to the contestants of national “poetry slam” contests around the nation, poetry is a little bit more active than that.
Simply put, a poetry slam is the competitive art of performance poetry. It puts a dual emphasis on writing and performance, encouraging poets to focus on what they’re saying and how they’re saying it. At these events, poets perform their work and are judged by members of the audience. These poetic competitions trace their origins to 1984, when construction worker and poet Marc Smith started a poetry reading at a Chicago jazz club looking for a way to breathe life into the open mike format. The series, and its emphasis on performance, laid the groundwork for the brand of poetry that would eventually be exhibited in slam. In 1986, Smith approached the owner of the Green Mill, a Chicago jazz club and former haunt of Al Capone, with a plan to host a weekly poetry competition on Sunday nights. The Uptown Poetry Slam was born on July 25 of that year. Smith drew on baseball and bridge terminology for the name, and instituted the basic features of the competition, including judges chosen from the audience and cash prizes for the winner.
Presently Poetry slam contests take place regularly all over the country, coming to a head with regional competitions. This year, Florida’s five top poetry teams will compete at “Hot Air 2002” on April 20 at Cuillo Centre for the Arts in West Palm Beach. The competition will include a team from Florida Atlantic University, as well as teams from Miami, Delray, West Palm Beach and Orlando.
The competition is based in three parts: poetry reading, theater, and game show. Poets will perform their work in three minutes or less and require audience participation. The official rules are that each team sends a team of four poets, each of who performs one poem of his/her construction without the aid of props, costumes, or musical accompaniment.
Five judges are randomly selected from the audience. The only qualification to be a judge is that they aren’t friends or family of any of the poets, to avoid bias. Judges score each poem Olympic-style (1-10) and then the high and low scores are dropped. The three remaining scores are added together. The team score is the total of its four poets’ scores and the highest scoring team wins the lyrical boxing match.
The event this year is being organized by Hyperformance Poetics, which is made up of slam mistress of the Delray Beach slam Marya Summers and slam master of the West Palm Beach slam Richard Green. “Slam mistress/master” is the title given to the person who organizes a slam certified with Poetry Slam, Inc.
“Hot Air 2002” is being held as part of an all-day poetry festival in West Palm Beach called “UniVerse 2002.” The daytime events, which are open to public participants, include a youth slam for poets ages 8 to 15, a creativity workshop, an improvisational slam, a hip-hop cafí©/lyricists lounge and a drum improv.
One of the best things about a poetry slam is the range of poets it attracts. At the competitions, there is a diverse range of styles being represented, including heartfelt love poetry, searing social commentary, uproarious comic routines and bittersweet personal confessional pieces. Poets are free to do work in any style on any subject. Winning a poetry slam requires some measure of skill and a huge dose of luck. The judges’ tastes, the audience’s reactions, and the poets’ performances all shape a slam event. Poetry Slam, Inc., the official non-profit organization charged with overseeing the international coalition of poetry slams, uses the motto “the points are not the point; the point is poetry” to describe what is important in poetry slams, and that about says it all. So for an opportunity to hear creative verbal artists compete against each other in more of a Muhammad Ali style than a Walt Whitman one, try to make it to “Hot Air 2002” this Saturday.
For more information on Hot Air 2002, being held on April 20 at 8 p.m. at Cuillo Center for the Arts, 201 Clematis Street in West Palm Beach, call (561) 835-9226. For information on other UniVerse events taking place on April 20 around WPB, visit home.earthlink.net/~msflambe/_wsn/page2.html.
