Simply put, poetry slam is the competitive art of performance poetry. Established in the mid-80s as a means to heighten public interest in poetry readings, slam has evolved into an international art form emphasizing audience involvement and poetic excellence.
In the majority of slam series, organizers stage weekly or monthly events in a public space, such as a bar or cafe. Poets wishing to compete sign up with a host, and the host finds five audience members who wish to serve as judges.
Poets must follow a series of rules: the poems must be of each poet’s own construction, the poet may not use props, costumes, or musical instruments, and if the poet goes over the time limit, points are deducted from his or her score.
Judges, who are encouraged to factor both content and performance into their evaluations, judge each poet on a 0.0 to 10.0 scale. The high score and low score are dropped, and the middle three scores become the score for that particular poet.
To insure that the entire audience is involved, the host encourages the audience to respond to the poet in any way they see fit, be it impassioned cheering or lusty booing. The judges, in turn, are encouraged to remain consistent with themselves and not let the audience influence them…
See Also: Poetry Slam – Wikipedia
Some Advice?
Its just a slam ramble
From a thread on Perth Indymedia
Whilst its kinda interesting to read the analysis of a slam here on perth indy, the point of a slam is NOT the competition. At all.
The competition is an illusion, a delusion.
Slam events are purposely designed to produce random judges from the folks in the crowd, ie not literary judges, not high-brow poets, not beret-wearing snobs! Although if those are in the audience then they may get to be a judge.
Its random. Its open and transparent.
Slams began in the 80s in Chicago as an attempt to get more people along to poetry readings. And it works!
For me: having organised hundreds of poetry events since the mid-90s - including dozens of slams - the idea of a slam is to bring people to poetry events. Not for poets to compete with each other. The competition is certainly tongue-in-cheek and just a way of presenting new work to new audiences.
A slam event takes poetry to a higher place.
For poets: its an opportunity to perform your work in bite-sized chunks to a decent audience of people who may not necessarily be poets. Its a chance to perform quality work in a quality space. To be the best poet YOU can be - not the Winner of the comp!
For those that want to win a slam: Please don't enter it to win! Enter to hone your work, to take the opportunity to perform new stuff to new people. Refine and polish, rehearse and edit, craft and shape etc... Be the best poet you can be.
For the audience: its an opportunity to be entertained by contemporary and exciting poetry. The competition factor is a ruse. A joke. A ploy to get people in the venue. And it works. Every heat of this series was booked-out. We even needed a TV in the bar for those who couldn't fit in the theatre.
And the best bit about slams: I get to declare the next poet like they were a World Wrestling Federation superstar...
Nobody wins a slam. Everybody wins a slam.
:)
cheers,
al boyd
