About.com Poetry - Jason Pettus Reports on National Poetry Slam 1999

Poetry

Filed In:

Poetry

Letter from Chicago

Hi everybody -- Jason Pettus here, writing from the City On The Make, Chicago, Illinois. Well, it's Monday afternoon, most of the poets have safely left town, and it's time to reflect on the events of this year's National Poetry Slam. This has proven to be a watershed year for performance poetry, not only in terms of popularity, but in the way we as writers are starting to view ourselves as a cohesive community. Nowhere have these issues become more apparent than in the last week here in the Windy City.

This, the tenth anniversary of the NPS, turned out to be a barn-burner in regards to audience attendance and media exposure. The surprise was not the popularity of the finals (with an audience of approximately 3,000) but rather the packed crowds at the rest of the festival, with at least four preliminary bouts completely selling out and nearly a thousand people attempting to get into the individual semi-finals. You can thank the NPS organizing committee for getting the word out so effectively, and you can also thank the Chicago media for taking such an interest in the event. (At least eight full-page articles came out in the weeks preceding the slam, including front-page stories in the Chicago Reader and the Tribune Sunday Magazine. Two articles about the finals have since appeared in the Tribune and the Sun-Times.) As you might have heard, 60 Minutes came and did an entire piece on this year's NPS, and cameras from CNN, FOX, and two different documentary crews were also spotted around town.

The afternoon/late-night events also had record-setting attendances, including nearly two hundred people in the house for the Hiphop open mic and packed houses for almost all the other 25 non-competitive events. The comment I heard time and time again during the week was regarding the smoothness of event transition, with each daytime event starting on time and only a handful of actual bouts running late. (Even the finals, an event notorious for long-windedness, ran only 20 minutes over its scheduled time.)

The big news among poets this year was the large number of upsets: Perennial favorites Albuquerque, New York-Manhattan and Chicago-Green Mill took dives in the first round. Chicago-Mad Bar, a favorite for the finals, also failed to make the semis, and the individual competition saw the quick elimination of such veterans as Danny Solis, Taylor Mali, Maria McCray, Gary Glazner, Wammo, DJ Renegade and Sheila Donohue. Some say that the Chicago audiences, already used to a large and healthy poetry scene, were less tolerant of the work that stereotypically does well in a slam environment. Others claim that the whole thing was a fluke, another example of randomness in judging poetry.

The other big news inside the loop this year was the vast increase in formal protests (at least five that I heard of) and the speed with which they were dispatched (at least four were thrown out almost immediately). In fact the only protest to last all the way to the traditional Saturday morning meeting was Cleveland's, who had charged that Oakland, California's intense enthusiasm for fellow team members (including the shouting of lines with the poet from the audience) constituted an illegal "group piece," rendering their victory null and void. Instead of an equal and heated debate, however, the vast majority of the festival's participants sided against Cleveland, and the charge of "sour grapes" was heard many times in the back bars throughout Wicker Park.

Complaints? There were a few. The Mesa, Arizona team correctly pointed out that it was difficult for people with disabilities to get around the tournament. Many, many complaints were made concerning the rudeness of the Chicago Theatre door staff and the NPS's failure to step in and resolve the crisis. (In fact, the first-place San Jose team was barred from their own victory celebration when they ran out to their car without their ticket stubs and were not allowed back in the building.) In general though, I personally heard almost nothing but compliments this year. People seemed to genuinely have a good time, with most partaking in at least a few daytime events, having their problems quickly solved by the NPS staff, and generally happy with the way the tournament was run.

The thing I found most interesting and important at this year's NPS, however, was the vast number of new participants who chose to view the entire nature of competitive poetry in a new light. The week was filled with examples of teams encouraging community instead of fostering competition, building bridges instead of fences. More and more teams were seen laughing at their low scores instead of crying, cheering their competitors more loudly than they cheered themselves, and collaborating with poets from across the nation during the afternoon open mics. Now that the NPS has proven itself in its tenth year to be the most popular literary event in the country, a growing number of participants are publicly questioning the validity of placing such emphasis on the competitive aspect of the festival. No better example of this can be found than the San Jose and San Francisco teams who, after tying for first place in the final round, rejected the NPS's insistence on a sudden death match and chose instead to share the glory equally. With the unexpected announcement of Marc Smith's retirement from the national organizing committee, the way has been paved for these younger, more tolerant people to secure high positions within the slam community and to enact some profound changes in the way we view and publicly present a national poetry slam. The next two years should prove to be perhaps the most interesting in the history of slam poetry.

So what did I personally learn? I learned that Grand Marnier hangovers are much, much worse than regular hangovers. I learned that the Fargo, North Dakota team was the most charming team of the tournament, and the Montreal team the sexiest. I learned I never want to volunteer to work on something like this again. I learned that Chicago golden-boy Dennis Kim fell asleep in a Laundromat yesterday for five hours. I learned that publishing a gossip column at the NPS can be detrimental to one's health. And once again I learned, as I do every year, that there are many things to be enjoyed at the NPS besides the competition, many poets to admire and many performances to be in awe of, many new friends to meet and old ones to catch up with. I cannot wait until Providence.

--Jason Pettus