June 13, 2008 - 11th Hour Poetry Slam

The Eleventh Hour Poetry Slam occurs in the Langston Hughes Room (aka the Peace and Justice Room) of Busboys and Poets on the second Friday of every month. This Friday just happened to be a Friday the 13^th. Busboys and Poets is a restaurant with a bookstore in the back and the large Langston Hughes Room on the other side. The restaurant itself was packed, and we had to wait until nearly 11 PM before the room was cleared out enough for the SLAM.

The emcee, a slam poet named 2 Deep, was a personable and energetic woman with a great stage manner. She selected five volunteers from the audience to judge the slam, and she presented each with a dry erase board. She told the judges to rate each poem on a scale of 0.0-10.0, and to express their feelings truly. 2 Deep presented this as a favor to the poet: this way, the performer would know if he had a truly awful piece and would not make the mistake of performing it again. She cautioned the judges not to let the audience sway them. However, after the judges returned to their seats, 2 Deep addressed the audience. She warmed them up and made them scream with a few games, and then she told them she expected full participation in the SLAM. The job of the audience, she said, was to sway the judges. This created an interesting, and enjoyable dichotomy, as the judges were supposed to rise above the audience’s attempts to influence them.

Since so many of the audience members were entirely new to Slam, 2 Deep gave us a succinct definition. She said that

"slam is competitive poetry. It is a way for the community to tell the poets what they like,"

creating a dialogue between the artist and the audience. Each poet was given a maximum of 3 minutes and 20 seconds to present their piece before they would start receiving point deductions (-0.5 points for each ten seconds over time). The competition itself consisted of two rounds; each poet would present twice, and they would be ranked based on cumulative score. During the intermission, the featured poet, Jon Sands, a finalist in the 2007 National Slam, would perform.

Ten poets performed in the competition, though only eight really competed. Lamar was a professional performer with a play coming up next week, and he was asked to through his performance, which he did in spectacular fashion (eight minutes over, complete with a plug for his play, CD, and fractions of about 3 different poems). Sean was absent for the first round, so he performed in the second, but could not compete overall.

The winners were Jon, Stephen, and Maji (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd). I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to talk directly with Jon prior to the performance. He was very personable. Jon said that he first got into poetry as a 13 year old writing love poems to girls. He said he stopped writing for a while, but had picked it up again. The appeal of slam to him was that it was a way for the poet to communicate with the community. Rather than writing on his own secret poems of angst and love, he could present and become part of an open dialogue. His first poem played off of the love poem theme, asking a girl to “choose me,” which because the refrain as he went through a comical series of metaphors for why she should chose him (Eg. “Chose me like I’m a midget at a limbo competition, like I’m the only computer at recess with the Oregon Trail game”). He was particularly successful for the accessibility of his references and his topic, as well as the running joke with dysentery.

The most common artistic elements I noticed from these performers were the use of repetition and refrains to carry the poem. They truly created a beat. Rhyme was used, but only relied upon by Maji and one or two others. These poets tended to have a more rap-like rhythm and cadence. I was surprised by how non-rap-like most of the performances were. Few of the poets relied upon paper to read, though most had their poems written out for reference. The more successful poets tended to have better stage mannerisms and microphone etiquette. They also tended to have accessible poems. Many of the poets brought in bits in foreign languages, such as Swahili or Hebrew. Love and religion and human bonds were among the most powerful themes.

Jon Sands, the featured performer, was amazing. He performed 7 original slam poems, one haiku inspired by DC (“He told me to clear / the sidewalk and his gun was / much larger than mine”), and he read one poem from Michael Sireli, another Slam poet. His major themes included love, tolderance, social awareness. One of my favorite of his pieces used the world cup as a metaphor for how the government is separate from the nation, making the point that people should not reject the US if they disagree with policy but act out of love of this country to improve it. Notably, he said that,

"the power of slam is that it allows us all to participate in “one long conversation we’ve all been long over due for.”

I was impressed not only with his ability to present, but also with his message. Sands also cheered the audience for supporting live art rather than watching reruns at home.


We didn’t finish until 1:30 AM, but even then the audience energy was high and the night electric! It was so much fun!