Report from the Poetry Wars:
Slam’s 10th Anniversary, A NYC Perspective
Dateline: 6/29/99
August 11 - 14, 1999, Slam returns to birthplace Chicago for the biggest of them all, the Tenth Anniversary edition of the National Poetry Slam. There will be 48 teams, day and night events for four days, 200 poets.
The recent IMHO triumph of the People’s Poetry Gathering, a three-day, 10,000-people, 200-poet, 100-event festival that sprawled across Lower Manhattan, which Stanley Kunitz labeled “a populist bacchanal,” makes this a good time to check Slam’s continuing embroiled embrace in the poetry world and how Slam itself has changed in New York, since I brought it to the Nuyorican Poets Cafe ten years ago.
The People’s Poetry Gathering had two major themes: multifarious Oral Traditions -- native Indian, cordel, decima, jibaro, jali, blues, hiphop, rock, avant, many more -- and Emerging Forms. Slam was one of three Emerging Forms recognized at the Gathering, the others being the Poetry Bout, from Taos, site of the annual Poetry Circus & World Heavyweight Championship Poetry Bout since 1982, and Braggin’ Rites, less than a year old, a cutting form with music that grew out of free-style cyphers (improv poetry circles) at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. The Slam, with over 100 sites around the country, is by far the most popular and energy-laden -- indeed, Slam has been the most active grass-roots arts movement in the country for the last decade, and has had a crucial impact in democratizing poetry, and art in general, by pointing to the participatory aspects of performance for both artist and audience.
The Beta Bete of the poetry world, Slam was invented, as the hagiographical resources echo, by ex-construction worker Marc (So What??!!) Smith when he and an intrepid band of poetry performers needed something to fill in the last 15 minutes of a poetry show they were running at the Get Me High in Chitown in 1986. “Hey,” uttered Smith as the story goes, “why not a poetry competition with judges scoring each poem and we call it Slam?” The Slam took off, literally. It soon moved to the fabulous Green Mill Tavern, where Marc continues the Sundays-at-7 events to this day. You all should haj it over there ASAP.
The Top 10 Things That Blew My Mind About Slam Ten Years Ago And Continue Today
But Marc’s contention that Slam is a community-builder has proven to be correct. The slam experiment in community will someday be seen as the closest thing we have to a 90s version of Black Mountain. But it’s just as true that Slam is a marketing ploy. An emergent form in this Triumph of Capitalism means being able to find a way through the billboard blitz to the tender public. Slam is a way to ease an anti-poetic era into an ear of plenty, enabling you to go to a poetry reading without having to admit you’re going to a poetry reading. Slam!
10. Changing the sillyputty poet-audience relationship into a critical one with the poem as the medium of exchange.
9. People who don’t have to pass a test to qualify as judges. Instead, they are selected whimsically and score according to what they like. Point being - we are all judges.
8. You cannot rate a poem. So it happens every Slam.
7. Audience interactivity is encouraged. The audience is part of the show. Heckles are poems and democratizing.
6. The accessibility that slam audiences demand from the poets they listen to. They don't insist that they understand the poem at first hearing, but they seem to feel they have every right to punish poets for being deliberately obfuscatory and abstruse.
5. Poets are pushed to give it up, gladiatorially. After years of readings being a means to introduce the audience to text or for the celebration of a book’s publication in Slam, performance is emphasized as a means of poem transmission that is the equivalent of text.
4. The whole hoopla caboodle is a parody of what poetry opposes, yet when done masterfully always works both ways.
3. That it’s called a Poetry say-the-word Slam say-the-word. The Roller Derby of poetry.
2. That it attracts crowds for poetry, not necessarily particular poets, but poets reap the rewards. That it moves, fast. That it entertains, deep (well, on occasion. . . I mean, should).
1. That for each of these reasons, there is just as valid a reason for NOT.
I have come to change my mind about the 3-minute rule (at Nationals, there are penalties assessed after 3:09! -- I was the lone holdout for no penalties at the 1996 Slammasters Meeting), knowing it helps the show flow. I still believe props, costumes and music are valid accouterments of poetry performance, and by outlawing them, the Slam community sets itself up for controversy over minutiae rather than, say, organizing to change the world.
And right here in town (when the town is New York City), Poetry Slams have had quite a history including winning the National Slam the last two years. I ran the Slam at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (236 E. Third Street, B-C) for seven years, 1989-1997; Keith Roach has been there since with Dot Antoniades hosting the Slam Open on Wednesdays and Steve Colman of last year’s National Champion Nuyorican New York team coaching the slam team. The Cafe’s Friday night slams continue to be the most popular in town, the Spotlights (solo readings) which precede the Slams have had some great and varied readers recently, and the Cafe is still the spot to test-drive your poetic capabilities in public. New poets like “the Amazing” Staceyann Chin continue to emerge, and a great African American scene centered in Jersey, Poetry Nation, has been camping out at Cafe lately, wowing crowds and spewing freely verse amazing.
Two other Slams are now held regularly in New York. The Urbana Slam led by Patrick Anderson, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Amanda Nazario, and Beau Sia, is a continuation of the Chelsea Feast Slam hosted by Keystone in 1998, which in turn continued the West Bank Slam and provided NYC with its first National Slam crown two years ago in Team Mouth Almighty.* Urbana is a great scene, very young, with Diva Slams, Goth Slams, and Prom Slams that are very funny and powerful. They slam every Sunday 9 p.m., at the Gene Frankel Theater, 24 Bond Street, near Lafayette.
a little bit louder at Bar 13, 35 East 13th Street near University, happens Mondays at 8. 13 is hosted by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez along with Lynne Procope, who does her House of Woman reading monthly, and Roger Bonair-Agard -- all three were on the National Championship Nuyorican team last year. These poets have a sharp political edge and extraordinary performance chops, but the scene is open to all styles; the Dallas Slam Team, which finished second at Nationals and is decidedly more pop-boho oriented, recently visited and tied the home team homies. There is a lot of crossover between 13 and Urbana, the sweet camaraderie one hopes for under Slam’s ferocious competitive cover.
The Nuyorican, Urbana, and 13 will all field teams at Chicago this summer. Will New York threepeat home the Boot, as the Slam trophy is affectionately known? Will internecine rivalries rock the National Drunken Boat?
But the biggest news now in Slam is: Youth! Intercollegiate! High Schools! The Bronx Writers Center just concluded a series of Slams at Borders (the mind boggles at the ironic allies of the late 90s), hugely successful: Laurie Palmieri and Leslie Shipman have a totally terrific writing program for teens (and others) (718-409-1265) under the sweet sponsorship of Bill Aguado and the Bronx Council on the Arts. The Bronx are sisters with Writers Corps programs in San Francisco and Washington, DC, and their finals will be in DC, May 14 - 16.
The teen volume’s been amped by a fresh program called Youth Speaks, which began in San Francisco and is now in New York through the super Teachers & Writers Collaborative, under the direction of Jen Weiss (212-691-6590). The National Teen Slam was held in Santa Fe, April 17 - 18, with eight teams from around the country. The Youth Speaks Youth Slam at the People’s Poetry Gathering was an extraordinary event.
The nation’s first Intercollegiate Slam was held at Sarah Lawrence last fall, and on April 7, 1999, the first NYC Intercollegiate Slam was held before a screaming crowd at NYU. Columbia walked off with the trophy (Ken and Barbie-ized), besting NYU, Bard, Sarah Lawrence, and Fordham, in a great night of, for, and by poetry.
The Future! is the Future of Slam. By taking on the competitive model in this horrendous (burp) era of The Triumph of Capitalism Over Everything, poetry can demand parity with other competitive events, like football. I want my kids to have the opportunity to letter in poetry slam. And I want to hear those cheers, those public poems led by the poetry cheerleaders. And I want heckleleaders, too! (Check out NYC’s most famous heckler, Prof. Steve Cannon, at A Gathering of the Tribes.)
--Bob Holman
*Mouth Almighty was an all-poetry CD label I worked for with Bill Adler and Sekou Sundiata, 1996-99. Part of Mercury Records, Mouth Almighty lost its distribution, as did many other small labels, when Polygram merged with Universal in January 1999. Team Mouth Almighty was very controversial in the Slam family, and caused a ruling that teams now must be named after geographic locations. The controversy was exacerbated by the all-star Slammers who comprised the team, and won the Championship: Regie Cabico, Evert Eden, Taylor Mali, and Beau Sia. Today, Mouth Almighty continues as a book publisher.
Extra added treat: a poem by one of the hottest slammers in New York City:
Science
by Cristin O'Keefe AptowiczWhen two strands of life
smash into one another
and become one,
that is called fusion
Cold fusion is a myth
In order for two things to become one
you need heat, a lot of it,
and there's always been a lot of heat
between us,
Jason,
whenever you get pedantic
and ramble on about science
All your swan's neck flasks,
and balding Madame Curies,
all your anecdotes about
Dick Feynman's van
with his own Nobel Prize-winning
Feynman's Diagrams on the side
and when people used to honk
their horns, roll down their windows
and say:
‘Hey! Do you realize those are
Feynman's Diagrams
on the side of your van?’
Dick would just answer back:
‘Yes, I am Richard Feynman!’
God, I adore scientists
Or maybe just you, Jason,
because you will never love me
as much as you love process
that research, hypo,
experiment, record,
experiment, record,
experiment, record,
conclusion, thesis,
satisfaction and contempt that is bred
into you at every lab hour, every No-Doze
stoned study group, every opportunity
to dig up dinosaur bones in Nova Scotia
so that you can send me a postcard
covered in dust
I wrote a poem about you last week
swearing up and down that I would write
no more about you,
no more about you,
no more about you
but this isn't about you, Jason,
this is about science
your life choice, your dreamworld
and I have to write about you, Jason,
because you are my science,
because science is your god
And no, you do not dictate what I do or say
and no, you did not create me,
but you do control my temperatures
you do influence my tides,
making me rise and fall and rise
and fall and rise and fall
and rise
according to how you see the moon
I've had enough poets, Jason
And I know that you get shy,
because you think you don't
have a metaphor
just that old bunsen burner
you fished out of the trash
and wrote your name on it
you called it a relic and
wrote your name on,
saying you wanted to attach
yourself to a ‘pre-er’ science,
a time when less was known
You are beautiful in ways
you aren't even aware of
And I'm trying to explain
this all to you over breakfast,
but there is a science to loving
someone, and I have failed that
course every time I signed up for it
I just keep thinking about
the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
which states, no matter what, there will
always be something compelling
our non-love, our non-togetherness
so I'll just keep quiet and eat
my florentine omelet, if you please
And you can talk some more about
you favorite story, ‘Spontaneous Generation!’
the concept that mice came from wheat,
and flies from wheat, and smart little Louie Pasteur
proved them all wrong, and purified milk as well
‘Nothing comes from nothing,’ you say
And I want to catalogue our experiences
in a white lab coat with goggles,
I want to offer up my love on petri dish
asking you to stain my culture
and watch it grow
Because you are my science, Jason,
you are my endless hypothesis,
and I am tired of the
experiment, record,
experiment, record
Get me to my conclusion, Jason!
Prove my thesis statement,
that states that
you squared
plus me squared
equals
love squared
And if this think this is a joke, Jason,
why don't you adapt your science
and prove me wrong
