Poetry Slams: Performance Plus Art
Performance artists of all types enjoy the awe and the kudos
coming their way from the general public. In return, any concert
or performance turns livelier with audience participation.
During the recent decades, more and more musicians--even those
in the classical music field--have begun to encourage the
audience to sing along or clap to the beat. This behavior has
seeped out to other fields such as stand-up comedy and open-mic
poetry readings.
With these facts in mind, I imagine, the slam poetry is
succeeding because people are drawn into the magnetism of our
clannish eras when everyone participated in the tribal dances,
telling stories, and sing-along sessions. Truth is, I had not
heard of "Slams" in regard to poetry, until--in the writing site
I belong to--I started to participate in the slam poetry
contests, hosted by two site members: one, a creative writing
professor from Chicago and the other an English teacher/poet
from Australia.
Later on, I found out that slam poetry was sometimes attacked by
the academia with the idea that slams cheapen the true art of
poetry. As an answer to this accusation, slam poets became more
vocal and more organized to make themselves accepted as members
of a serious performance media.
The first slam poetry started in 1984, in the Get Me High
lounge, a Chicago jazz club, by a construction worker named Marc
Smith. Two years later, Marc Smith offered a plan to another
jazz club, the Green Mill. When the owner accepted Marc Smith's
plan of hosting a poetry competition for performance poets every
Saturday night, the slam poetry competition was introduced to
the public arena.
Although the opposition to the poetry slams still exists, slams
have performed an impressive function in promoting poetry to the
general public. During the later years, more poetry books have
been sold and an astonishing number of searches about poetry
have been conducted on the internet search engines.
Poetry slams are here to stay because they have pushed poetry
into the livelier world of performance, turning it into an
intense experience for both the poet-participants and the
audience. The art of poetry too, when faced with detachment or
worse yet extinction, has welcomed the slams, as if returning to
its earliest origin of spoken words made to be heard.
A serious poetry slam, as performance poetry, does not depend on
the quality of the words, lines, and the poetic devices alone.
It also involves oral skills such as eye contact with the
audience, emphatic reading, voice control, and controlled body
language. This is because poetry slams are performed primarily
for the audience entertainment. A slam is not the same as an
open-mic performance since an open-mic is there to encourage the
poets while the audience fares second.
Sometime ago, I was among the audience in an informal poetry
slam. True, it felt akin to a vaudeville show, but the audience
participation and the poets' enjoyment were genuine. In an
informal slam poetry contest, the judges are selected from among
the audience and all forms of audience participation are
encouraged, even booing the poets at the end or the middle of
their poetry readings. If the audience is dissatisfied the poet
leaves the stage; however, during the slam I watched nobody left
the stage as the result of public booing. Probably, I was inside
a quieter audience.
In the beginning, slam poetry used to be about specific subjects
that involved public concerns like politics, baseball, social
issues, etc. Afterwards, the themes and the subjects expanded in
range immensely.
At present, poetry slams find worldwide fame due to the efforts
of PSI or Poetry Slam Inc. and The National Poetry Slam or the
annual slam championship tournament. During the first round of a
serious slam competition, all entrants can read their poetry.
The time period for each poem is three minutes. Poets are
allowed to enter the succeeding rounds if they qualify. The
judges' scores are numerical from zero to ten.
In the beginning, this competition was for poets singly.
Nowadays, poets compete in four or five persons in a team in
their home states and countries from North America and Europe.
The winning teams travel to a city hosting the final
competition. Since most local public radios broadcast the
competition live to their listeners, the annual National Poetry
Slam has become a popular event.
Besides the National Poetry Slam, any community may organize
special slams such as: Dead Poet Slams that is reading from the
works of deceased poets; Cover Slams where poets read other
poets' works; Improv Slams where poets say whatever comes to
their minds without previous preparation; Group-Poem Slams
written by a group of poets instead of one; Haiku or Limerick
Slams; and the very funny Bad Poem Slams or the Low-Ball Slams
where the worst score wins.
Poetry slams are not a passing fad. Any form of entertainment
that is grounded in imagination with its roots in art will
surely endure excess showmanship or high-brow criticism. Poetry
Slams and their organization Poetry Slam Inc. are here to stay
in earnest.