Slam poetry
Encyclopedia
History
Marc Smith is credited with starting the poetry slam at the Get Me High Lounge in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in November 1984. In July 1986, the slam moved to its permanent home, the Green Mill Jazz Club. In 1990, the first National Poetry Slam
National Poetry Slam
The National Poetry Slam is a performance poetry competition where teams from across the United States, Canada, and France participate in a large-scale poetry slam. The event occurs in early August every year and takes place in a different US city....
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 2010, the National Poetry Slam
National Poetry Slam
The National Poetry Slam is a performance poetry competition where teams from across the United States, Canada, and France participate in a large-scale poetry slam. The event occurs in early August every year and takes place in a different US city....
has grown and currently features approximately 80 certified teams each year, culminating in five days of competition.
Slams have spread all over the world, with slam scenes in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, Israel, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, UK, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
, Poland, Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
, Bosnia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
, South Korea, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, India and Greece.
Format
In a poetry slam, members of the audience are chosen by an M.C. or host to act as judges for the event. In the standard slam, there are five judges. After each poet performs, each judge awards a score to that poem. Scores generally range between zero and ten. 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", whom 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 always forbidden in slams, distinguishing this category from its immediate predecessor, performance poetry
Performance poetry
Performance poetry is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. During the 1980s, the term came into popular usage to describe poetry written or composed for performance rather than print distribution.-History:...
. (The founder of performance poetry, Hedwig Gorski
Hedwig Gorski
Dr. Hedwig Gorski is an American performance poet and an avant-garde artist who labels her aesthetic as American Futurism...
, does not believe in systems for the arts
ARts
aRts, which stands for analog Real time synthesizer, is an audio framework that is no longer under development. It is best known for previously being used in KDE to simulate an analog synthesizer....
that include rules and restrictions since avant-gardists are also experimentalists.) 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, given the number of slots available. In an "Invitational Slam," by contrast, only those invited to do so may compete.Poetry Slam, Inc. holds several National and World Poetry Slams, including the Individual World Poetry Slam, The National Poetry Team Slam and The Women of the World Poetry Slam. The current (2011) IWPS champion is Chris August. The current (2011) National Poetry Slam Team champions are Denver (Nuba), Colorado. The current (2011) Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion is Theresa Davis.
A "Theme Slam" is one in which all performances must conform to a specified theme, genre, or formal constraint. Themes may include Nerd
Nerd
Nerd is a derogatory slang term for an intelligent but socially awkward and obsessive person who spends time on unpopular or obscure pursuits, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities. Nerds are considered to be awkward, shy, and unattractive...
, Erotica
Erotica
Erotica are works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions...
, Queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
, Improv
Improv
Improv may refer to:* Improvisation, an act of spontaneous invention* Musical improvisation* Improvisational theatre* The Improv, a chain of U.S. comedy clubs* Lotus Improv, a spreadsheet program...
, 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), 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 age 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
Dub poetry
Dub poetry is a form of performance poetry of West Indian origin, which evolved out of dub music consisting of spoken word over reggae rhythms in Jamaica in the 1970s....
, 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.
What is a dominant / successful style one year may be passe the next. Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz is an American poet and writer. Recently, she was awarded a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry.-Life:...
, slam poet and author of Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, was quoted in an interview on the Best American Poetry blog as saying:
Bob Holman
Bob Holman is a poet and poetry activist in the United States.- Career :After graduating from Columbia University in 1970, Bob Holman founded, with Sara Miles and Susie Timmons, the NYC Poetry Calendar, a free monthly publication with all the readings and poets "on the same page"...
, a poetry activist and former slammaster of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe
Nuyorican Poets Café
The Nuyorican Poets Café is a non-profit organization in Alphabet City, Manhattan. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement in New York City, USA, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip hop, video, visual arts, comedy and theatre.-History:...
, once called the movement "the democratization of verse." In 2005, Holman was also quoted as saying:
Responses to slam
Slam has not been without its critics.Non-academic responses to slam have included the Anti-Slam
Anti-Slam
Anti-Slam is a movement that was started more than a decade ago by Rev. Jen Miller at a venue called Collective: Unconscious,in reaction to the Poetry Slam movement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The timely event has spawned a movement of non-traditional performance among Lower East Side...
, 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.
Academic responses to slam have varied. In an interview published in the Paris Review
Paris Review
The Paris Review is a literary quarterly founded in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton. Plimpton edited the Review from its founding until his death in 2003. In its first five years, The Paris Review published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip Larkin, V. S...
, literary critic Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
called the movement "the death of art."
Academics are not the only critics of slam. Poet and lead singer of King Missile
King Missile
King Missile is an American avant-garde band that has been led in various disparate incarnations by poet/singer John S. Hall since 1986. Currently, Hall performs with a new version of the first incarnation, King Missile ....
, John S. Hall
John S. Hall
John S. Hall is an American poet, author, singer and lawyer perhaps best known for his work with King Missile, an avant-garde band that he co-founded in 1986 and has since led in various disparate incarnations....
has also long been a vocal opponent, taking issue with such factors as its inherently competitive
Competition
Competition is a contest between individuals, groups, animals, etc. for territory, a niche, or a location of resources. It arises whenever two and only two strive for a goal which cannot be shared. Competition occurs naturally between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. For...
nature and what he considers its lack of stylistic diversity. In his 2005 interview
Interview
An interview is a conversation between two people where questions are asked by the interviewer to obtain information from the interviewee.- Interview as a Method for Qualitative Research:"Definition" -...
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
Nuyorican Poets Café
The Nuyorican Poets Café is a non-profit organization in Alphabet City, Manhattan. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement in New York City, USA, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip hop, video, visual arts, comedy and theatre.-History:...
:
One of the most recent appraisals of slam comes from the poet Tim Clare. He offers a 'for and against' account of the phenomenon in 'Slam: A Poetic Diaialogue.'
Conversely, Slam poetry movement founder Marc Smith has been critical of the commercially successful Def Poetry
Def Poetry
Def Poetry, also known as Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry or Def Poetry Jam, which was co-founded by Bruce George, Danny Simmons and Deborah Pointer, is an HBO television series produced by hip-hop music entrepreneur Russell Simmons. The series presents performances by established spoken word...
television and Broadway live stage shows produced by Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons
-External links:** * * * * * * from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum* *...
, decrying it as "an exploitive entertainment [program that] diminished the value and aesthetic of performance poetry."
Academia and slam
As of 2011, four poets who have competed at National Poetry Slam have won National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) Fellowships for Literature:- Hal SirowitzHal SirowitzHal Sirowitz is an American poet.Sirowitz first began to attract attention at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe where he was a frequent competitor in their Friday Night Poetry Slam...
(who was on the Nuyorican Poets CafeNuyorican Poets CaféThe Nuyorican Poets Café is a non-profit organization in Alphabet City, Manhattan. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement in New York City, USA, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip hop, video, visual arts, comedy and theatre.-History:...
Poetry Slam team in 1993) won an NEA Fellowship in Poetry in 1994 - Jeffrey McDanielJeffrey McDanielJeffrey McDaniel is an American poet. He has published four books of poetry, most recently 'The Endarkenment' . He is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts...
(who was on numerous DC and California slam teams in the mid to late 1990s) won a NEA Fellowship in Poetry in 2003 - Adrienne Su (who was on the Nuyorican Poets CafeNuyorican Poets CaféThe Nuyorican Poets Café is a non-profit organization in Alphabet City, Manhattan. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement in New York City, USA, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip hop, video, visual arts, comedy and theatre.-History:...
Poetry Slam team in 1991) won a NEA Fellowship in Poetry in 2007 - Cristin O'Keefe AptowiczCristin O'Keefe AptowiczCristin O'Keefe Aptowicz is an American poet and writer. Recently, she was awarded a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry.-Life:...
(who was on the NYC-Urbana Poetry Slam team in 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2010) won a NEA Fellowship in Poetry in 2011
A number of poets belong to both academia and slam: as noted above Jeffrey McDaniel
Jeffrey McDaniel
Jeffrey McDaniel is an American poet. He has published four books of poetry, most recently 'The Endarkenment' . He is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts...
slammed on several poetry slam teams, and has since published several books and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College; Patricia Smith, a four-time national slam champion, went on to win several prestigious literary awards, including being nominated for the 2008 National Book Award, and being inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent in 2006; Bob Holman
Bob Holman
Bob Holman is a poet and poetry activist in the United States.- Career :After graduating from Columbia University in 1970, Bob Holman founded, with Sara Miles and Susie Timmons, the NYC Poetry Calendar, a free monthly publication with all the readings and poets "on the same page"...
founded the Nuyorican Poetry Slam has taught for years at the New School, Bard, Columbia and NYU; Craig Arnold
Craig Arnold
Craig Arnold was an American poet and professor. His first book of poems, Shells , was selected by W. S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets...
won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition
Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition
The Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the first collection of a promising American poet...
and has competed at slams; Kip Fulbeck
Kip Fulbeck
Kip Fulbeck is an American artist, spoken word performer, filmmaker and author. Fulbeck's work explores identity politics.His mixed race ethnic background is Cantonese, English, Irish, and Welsh...
, a professor of Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara competed in slam in the early-1990s and initiated the first spoken word course to be taught as part of a college art program's core curriculum; and poet/academics such as Michael Salinger
Michael Salinger
Michael Salinger is a poet, performer, and educator living in Northeast Ohio. He is one of the earliest participants in the National Poetry Slam, former board member of Poetry Slam inc., and current director of the organization's summer writing and performance conference...
, Felice Belle, Javon Johnson, Susan B. Anthony Somers-Willett, Robbie Q. Telfer
Robbie Q. Telfer
Robbie Q. Telfer is an American poet and poetry slam performer.He has been a featured performer in dozens of poetry shows throughout North America, including Toronto, Detroit, Oakland, Austin, St. Louis, Honolulu, Boston, and Providence, as well as the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City and the...
, Phil West, Ragan Fox, and Karyna McGlynn
Karyna McGlynn
Karyna McGlynn is an American poet.She is a poet and critic associated with spoken-word, New Sincerity, and New Confessionalism.Karyna first became popular as a performance poet in the poetry slam scene in the late 1990s, regularly performing at the Electric Lounge and South by Southwest...
have devoted much attention to the merging of the poetry slam community and the academic community in their respective works.
Some renowned poets have competed in slams, with less successful results. Henry Taylor
Henry S. Taylor
Henry S. Taylor is a Pulitzer Prize winning American poet and author of over 15 books of poetry.Taylor was born on 21 June 1942 in rural Loudoun County, Virginia, where he was raised as a Quaker. He went to high school at George School in Newtown, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of...
, winner of the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
, competed in the 1997 National Poetry Slam as an individual and placed 75th out of 150.
While slam poetry has often been ignored in traditional higher learning institutions, it slowly is finding its way into courses and programs of study. For example, at Berklee College of Music, in Boston, Slam Poetry is now available as a Minor course of study.
Youth poetry slam movement
Slam poetry has found popularity as a form of self-expression among many teenagers. Youth Speaks, 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 URBAN WORD NYC 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.
Young Chicago Authors (YCA) provides workshops, mentoring, and competition opportunities to youth in the Chicago area. Every year YCA presents Louder Than A Bomb
Louder Than a Bomb
Louder Than a Bomb is a documentary film about Louder Than a Bomb, an annual youth poetry slam in Chicago. The film was directed and produced by Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel. It follows the stories of several high school teams and individuals leading up to Louder Than a Bomb 2008 and their...
, 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
Saul Williams
Saul Stacey Williams is an American poet, writer, actor and musician known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop and for his leading role in the 1998 independent film Slam.-Biography:...
praised the youth poetry slam movement, explaining:
See also
- Spoken wordSpoken wordSpoken word is a form of poetry that often uses alliterated prose or verse and occasionally uses metered verse to express social commentary. Traditionally it is in the first person, is from the poet’s point of view and is themed in current events....
- Performance poetryPerformance poetryPerformance poetry is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. During the 1980s, the term came into popular usage to describe poetry written or composed for performance rather than print distribution.-History:...
- List of performance poets
- Results of the National Poetry Slam
- Oral poetryOral poetryOral poetry can be defined in various ways. A strict definition would include only poetry that is composed and transmitted without any aid of writing. However, the complex relationships between written and spoken literature in some societies can make this definition hard to maintain, and oral...
External links
- International Poetry Slam Portal (european)
- "An Incomplete History of Slam" at e-poets.net
- "Verbs On Asphalt: A History of the Nuyorican Poetry Slam"
- Documentary Film about the National Poetry Slam
- Indiefeed Performance Poetry Channel Nine-Part Podcast Series on the History of the New York City Poetry Slam
- GotPoetry.com / performance poetry and Slam Poetry web directory.