The revolution was not going to be televised so I ended up
in person at SLAMALAMADINGDONG: Open
Poetry Slam feat. Omar Musa and the launch of PARANG!. Poetry slam is
egalitarian in design – the thinking behind it is that anyone can enjoy poetry
not just Ivory Tower folks. For the uninitiated, there are 5 judges
who are made up of the audience and there are no ‘professional’ judges as I
erroneously thought for some daft (lack of a) reason, but as the hosting emcee
told us repeatedly ‘Applaud the poetry not the points.’ Somehow I ended up
being one of the 5 which was awesome. As it was not a ‘professional’ event we
could award scores from 7.0 to 10.0, with the top and bottom scores not
counting.
The entrants varied in quality which is to be expected given
it was a not a ‘professional’ event. A lot can happen in 3 minutes – one really
nervous young lady who stumbled and forgot her poem at the start really picked
it up and took it home; I scored her highly accordingly (nothing like watching a
underdog claw their way back). Some of them I didn’t immediately take to or felt
were meandering were able to bring it back before they finished. As someone who
has spent more time than he’d like to admit listening to Hip-hop – oh crunk who
cares? It’d at least add up to weeks – it is fun listening to spoken-word
following its own meter which gives it something of an interesting
unpredictability, as opposed to rappers who (generally) have to keep the beat. Also the audience clicks their fingers to show
their appreciation – if you really impress them then they vocalise their approval.
What I liked most was that I was that some of the work that
impressed me the most was work I wouldn’t ordinarily be exposed to; the
aforementioned recovery girl and another girl slamming (?) about quote/unquote
‘female issues’ really impressed me. If they can hit home to a Dumb White Male®
like me – well mission accomplished, I guess. As for the older guy talking who
went from ‘personally revealing’ to ‘TMI-overload’ to ‘borderline primal scream
therapy’ – well he wasn’t quite my cup of tea, but I hope it worked as
catharsis for him.
Judging was fun and for some reason I felt vindicated when
my low score was booed (every judging panel needs a Red Simons, right?). If
anything the booing meant they were defending each other rather than waiting
for each other to fall, which is great. There is a real communal feel about it
– I’m not sure I’m meshugganah about the ever so slightly cornball term ‘loveswamp’,
but I do like the concept of it.
At the risk of sounding smug and worrying more about the
points than the poetry, I also felt slightly vindicated that the 3 guys (yes,
guys) that won I gave scores somewhere in the 9s. Applaud the poetry….
Oh yeah Omar Musa read from his poetry book and he was
awesomesuace.
Rating: 7/10
Nutshell: Clicking not cliquey fun.
Would I do it again? Nah, not really my ‘scene’.