SLAM
S oa p b ox e x t r ao r d i n a i r e ro s i e b row n t e l l s
Clang. The stage lights go up; you’re faced
with the silence of an audience waiting for the first words of what they hope will be a winning poem. The silence unfolds like a wave around you, filing the surroundings with tension. Till that first sound comes clashing out of the poet’s mouth. And like a lightning bolt struck, you are hooked to their words for the next two minutes as they attempt to perform a wining piece. This is competition poetry, this is not performance poetry. It isn’t a reading or a piece of performance art. It’s the two entwined in a competitive grill. It is the art of poetry as something to move, to emote, to inspire and to create desire deep in the heart of those listening, to transform the spoken word into something altogether more powerful. It is the counter-culture revolution of our generation. A movement that has spread from its first light in the depths of the Get Me High Lounge in windy Chicago to as many cities as you can think of. It is not a performance of art but a revolution in itself; the spoken word revolution. It is powerful and persuasive, it is mesmerising and alluring. Filled with indignance, irreverence, hope or humour, poets from across the world take to the stage. Think about it like this: if Barack Obama, the Hulk and Hemingway got together and had a brainchild, it would be Slam Poetry. The oration of a leader, the power of a comic book character and the sheer dripping sentiment of an author and poet, combined in a two-minute slot. How can you not feel caught up in a movement like this?
28
Slam poetry comes in a very constricted format. It begins with an even number of poets, usually about eight. Each is given two minutes to astound, impact and provoke. Five members of the audience are selected before the poets take the stage to act as judge and jury. There are three elements upon which they judge; the poem, the performance and the audience reaction. Taking all of these into consideration a number from 1 to 10 is given to each poet. The highest and lowest scores are always thrown out. And each poet leaves the stage with a mark somewhere between 3 and 30. Four poets usually progress to the next stage where the time limit moves to two and a half minutes. The final round consists of two
poets usually within a three-minute time limit. I recently went to a slam poetry workshop with the late great Young Dawkins. (He’s not dead, he just moved to London.) Downstairs at the Cuckoo’s Nest in Tollcross, we sat, a cluster of around nine young poets all wide-eyed and clutching our notebooks to our knees, sipping our drinks with a kind of a delicious hesitation with the fear of showing our work to the national Scottish slam poet. He talked about Bukowski, about Whitman and the wonderful poets who litter the stages of spoken word nights up and down the country. Mainly, he spoke about the words and the power of the competition to draw out something incredible from the poet who takes the stage. ‘Compete!’ he cried and ‘For god’s sake learn the poem’ he called as we listened to him speak. We were invited to read our work - to take the spotlight and be poets. One by one, we opened up our notebooks, our hearts and our souls to reveal the
“
If barack obama, the hulk and hemingway got together and had a brainchild, it would be slam poetry
”
tiny portion of our inner workings that held our poetry. It was brilliant. Each poet gave something beautiful in that tiny little downstairs of a tiny little bar in Tollcross. We were hooked. After that all I wanted to do was perform again, and again and again. Till my words were spilling over with anticipation for the next stage, the next spotlight, the next poem.
The key to slam poetry, something Young said to us that night and something which every great poet knows; is not the audience, nor is it necessarily the performance. The poem is the key to slam poetry. The most important thing you can do is be honest, be true to yourself and be true to the poem. Write what you believe and the performance will come naturally. Write something true and the audience will be struck regardless of how you say it.