Challenge: Attend a poetry slam.

It is perhaps somewhat surprising I have never been to a poetry slam even before – a big fan of Carl Hancock Rux, a small fan of Saul Williams, and I have my favourite Hip-hop lyrics tattooed on my back. I’m not sure why I haven’t been to one before – perhaps I was afraid of a “Portlandia” skit inspired by Party Fun Action Committee’s “Word Up” (Google that shit!).

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’.