Poetry Slam
Recently I also attended a poetry slam at a local university, and I found it to be pretty entertaining. It was sponsored by one of the local undergraduate creative magazines at the university and consisted of four competitors, all of which were undergrads themselves. If I recall correctly it was a freshman, a junior, and two seniors, but I could be wrong on that. The slam was designed so that each of the four poets could read up to three poems of their choice, being of their own work, across the span of three rounds. The first round was what appeared to be the most nervous for the four of them, because after that round they seemed to be able to breathe and read with a better and more fluxiating tone.
The first person to read was a comedic yet Shakespearian poet. I didn’t catch his name but he wore very large glasses that lent him a scholarly aura. His poems went back and forth from well written but silly poems about farts and love, to ideas of what the state of art is and how some people in his eyes regard poetry in a “wrong” way. I felt that his work was the best of the competition.
The second poet was another guy who I couldn’t recall the name of and his work was very structured, Shakespearian would be again a very good description. A lot of his work was very mature in nature sounding similar to an older poet, older being fifty to sixty years ago or more. He discussed battle and duty in one of his poems that I found to be the best of his.
The third poet was a girl, actually the only girl, which I was disappointed to see, but she wrote a lot of more standard poems. Her themes were about love and heartbreak, as well as not fitting into society as everyone else does. The most amazing thing about her work was that she actually sang parts of two of her poems and as this would be cheesy for other poets, the poems were pleasantly accented by this. Her last poem was perplexing though, I’m not sure if she meant to stop and stand in silence or if she was lost in the poem or afraid but her last poem was choppy and didn’t come out well, though I enjoyed her performance.
I got a call and had to miss the last poet but I heard from a girl who works with me at the library that the fourth poet won, I don’t know what his work was like, but I thought that the first and second poets both were runners for first and second place. I wish I could have stayed for the whole thing but I had an important call about my great aunt who has been in the hospital for a week in
2 comments:
I agree! It's always interesting to hear what the kids are doing these days. Inspiring. And what you said about the first poet-- that he addressed issues about the state of art and regarding poetry in the "wrong" way-- while talking about farts and love-- seems spot-on. It's so frustrating that poetry has been marginalized for being "high language" or "inaccessible" to the masses; or rather, it's frustrating that it has that stereotype. Sure, some texts are more oblique than others, but arguably, even the most heavily intertextually referential text-- say, The Wasteland-- can still be read solely as a TEXT. Sure, you'll miss some references and perhaps not gain as 'deep' an appreciation for it as you would by comprehensively understanding all the cultural, mythological, literary, etc. references, but that doesn't mean that you can't still enjoy the poem itself!
So in essence, I'm glad that events like slams flaunt the more accessible side of poetry and pique interest. cheers!
It's always nice to know that poetry is growing, even if it's 'Shakespeareian.' I sometimes wonder if poetry slams would be more evocative if they chose to focus on a single theme, like food or travel for example. It'd be interesting to see different paths and ridges these new poets use and encounter while addressing one topic, instead of having an unlimited supply of meanings and patchwork to choose from. I don't mean to imply that such open poetry slams are insufficient; it’s just that such derivatives of slams might yield a newfound method of comparing performance poetry and the theory behind it. Sorry to hear about your great aunt, and thanks for the post.
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