By: Jessica Colund
Re-Post from www.blastmagazine.com
ST. PAUL, Minn. — When you hear the phrase “poetry reading,” does your mind’s eye envision a dusty room in a library; three rows of folding chairs, less than half of which are occupied; and a gray-bearded man reading Whitman knockoffs in a monotone voice? Stop nodding off, buy yourself a drink, and welcome to Saint Paul, Minnesota, host city of the 2010 National Poetry Slam.
Each year, over four hundred of the world’s best performance poets converge on a city to compete in the National Poetry Slam. Eighty teams of four to five poets each bring their best pieces and dramatically deliver them in bars, theaters, and auditoriums filled with cheering—and sometimes buzzed—crowds.
This year, Saint Paul won the honor of hosting the National Poetry Slam through an Olympics-style bidding process. Matthew Rucker, host city coordinator and slam master of the reigning national champion Saint Paul Soap Boxing team, explains that his vision for the event was to have “a huge and happy audience. The poets come to share. Without an audience, poets might as well have stayed home and read poetry to an empty room.” Rucker raised enough money to have a public relations budget larger than the entire cost of last year’s event. He also explains that he chose the venues based on proximity; all of them are conveniently within six blocks of each other.
In the final night of preliminaries, 14 bouts are taking place at these venues. At the History Theatre, the Lizard Lounge slam team from Cambridge, anxiously waits for their bout to begin. Having garnered a first-place ranking in their initial preliminary bout against three other teams, another win tonight will guarantee them a spot in the semifinals, as well as the prestigious distinction of being ranked one of the top twenty slam teams in the nation. However, as one of the first-place teams with the lowest total number of points, anything less than first place tonight will likely cause them to be eliminated.
Thick black curtains are draped behind History Theatre’s stage, which is empty except for five microphones, standing in military formation like a challenge to the poets. Who will make us sing, make us scream, use us to enrapture and enmesh the audience? They seem to be asking. Though the onlookers seated in the stadium seats chatter amongst themselves as they wait, all is quiet on the stage.
The emcee breaks the silence by announcing that the bout will soon begin. She reads the standard emcee spiel. “The slam was started in the 1980s by a construction worker named Marc Smith—” “So what!” interject the audience members who know that one of the grand traditions of slam poetry is dismissing the importance of its founder, illustrating that there are no celebrities or superstars here. As Rucker says, “slam is grassroots” and the poets are “just regular folks, not movers and shakers.” Poems are judged by randomly selected audience members who are not necessarily by poetry experts. When asked to describe what qualifies them to judge, the answers range from “having two dogs with two nostrils” to “being an elitist snob and an English major” to “living in Michigan.”
In order to help these amateur judges get used to the judging process, a calibrating or “sacrificial” poet delivers a poem which is judged as though it were actually in the slam. Tonight’s sacrificial poet is Jeff, who performs a standard-length piece of three minutes or less. The five judges flip through the large, laminated numbers on their score paddles until they select the score between 0 and 10 they feel is appropriate. The high and low scores are dropped, giving the poet a total score out of 30. Jeff receives a respectable 23.9 for his poem. Excitement and anticipation fill the theater; it is time for the slam to begin.
To read more about this article, Click Here.
Each year, over four hundred of the world’s best performance poets converge on a city to compete in the National Poetry Slam. Eighty teams of four to five poets each bring their best pieces and dramatically deliver them in bars, theaters, and auditoriums filled with cheering—and sometimes buzzed—crowds.
This year, Saint Paul won the honor of hosting the National Poetry Slam through an Olympics-style bidding process. Matthew Rucker, host city coordinator and slam master of the reigning national champion Saint Paul Soap Boxing team, explains that his vision for the event was to have “a huge and happy audience. The poets come to share. Without an audience, poets might as well have stayed home and read poetry to an empty room.” Rucker raised enough money to have a public relations budget larger than the entire cost of last year’s event. He also explains that he chose the venues based on proximity; all of them are conveniently within six blocks of each other.
In the final night of preliminaries, 14 bouts are taking place at these venues. At the History Theatre, the Lizard Lounge slam team from Cambridge, anxiously waits for their bout to begin. Having garnered a first-place ranking in their initial preliminary bout against three other teams, another win tonight will guarantee them a spot in the semifinals, as well as the prestigious distinction of being ranked one of the top twenty slam teams in the nation. However, as one of the first-place teams with the lowest total number of points, anything less than first place tonight will likely cause them to be eliminated.
Thick black curtains are draped behind History Theatre’s stage, which is empty except for five microphones, standing in military formation like a challenge to the poets. Who will make us sing, make us scream, use us to enrapture and enmesh the audience? They seem to be asking. Though the onlookers seated in the stadium seats chatter amongst themselves as they wait, all is quiet on the stage.
The emcee breaks the silence by announcing that the bout will soon begin. She reads the standard emcee spiel. “The slam was started in the 1980s by a construction worker named Marc Smith—” “So what!” interject the audience members who know that one of the grand traditions of slam poetry is dismissing the importance of its founder, illustrating that there are no celebrities or superstars here. As Rucker says, “slam is grassroots” and the poets are “just regular folks, not movers and shakers.” Poems are judged by randomly selected audience members who are not necessarily by poetry experts. When asked to describe what qualifies them to judge, the answers range from “having two dogs with two nostrils” to “being an elitist snob and an English major” to “living in Michigan.”
In order to help these amateur judges get used to the judging process, a calibrating or “sacrificial” poet delivers a poem which is judged as though it were actually in the slam. Tonight’s sacrificial poet is Jeff, who performs a standard-length piece of three minutes or less. The five judges flip through the large, laminated numbers on their score paddles until they select the score between 0 and 10 they feel is appropriate. The high and low scores are dropped, giving the poet a total score out of 30. Jeff receives a respectable 23.9 for his poem. Excitement and anticipation fill the theater; it is time for the slam to begin.
To read more about this article, Click Here.
