This weekend, I attended the slam poetry event hosted by the Calgary Public Library
and This Is My City at the John Dutton Theatre in the Central Library. The program was essentially the Kickoff Event for this year’s 9th Annual Calgary Spoken Word Festival. It is also a part of Youth Week Calgary 2012.
If you haven’t heard of slam poetry before, let me explain some key points of this fascinating literary sport:
-Usually, the competing poets are split into two groups of five poets each, the top four move on to the second round, and the top two compete for the Top Slam Poet title. For our purposes, there being only six contestants, we only had two rounds, the top three moving on to the second round.
-Judges traditionally consist of audience members. Each gives a score out of ten to the nearest decimal place. The scores should be based around the poem itself, the performance of the poet and the audience reaction.
-The first poet to perform is called the “sacrificial poet,” who doesn’t compete, but is marked like a competitor to set the bar for the other contestants.
-Poems cannot go over three minutes long. For every one minute over, half a point is deducted from the final score. In adult competitions, long poems open the door to obscenities shouted out by the audience. Timing is taken very seriously.
-Louder, larger and more rowdy the audience, the better, especially because part of the score is based on audience reaction. The audience is encouraged to scream for their favourite contestants and “boo” the judges for giving scores they disagree with.
-Poems can be of any sort: Jazzy, hip-hop, lyrical, sound, you name it!
-There are only a few rules: No props costumes or musical instruments (your voice is the only instrument) and no going over the aforementioned time limit.
This particular poetry slam had the theme of “sustainability” as it was part of the Ecopalooza fair being held at the library the same day and followed a Voices of Nature concert. The afternoon commenced with teens taking the floor with ‘open mike’ time, where poems could be presented non-competitively. Next came the competitors and I heard a wide variety of topics discussed, from Earth Day, to Mother Nature, to more intimate interpretations of sustainability. The top three winners were awarded generous assortment of prizes: 1st place = $70 gift certificate to Shelf Life books, 2nd place = $50 gift certificate to Pages and 3rd Place = $30 gift certificate to Pages. The first place winner will also be given the opportunity to compete for a spot on the official Calgary Slam Team.
I had the honour of winning 3rd place with the following poem:
On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
On the corner of bitter and sweet,
tread softly my child.
Soak yourself in the earth,
the memories,
among the broken hearts and wistful smiles.
If only you could bottle up lust
as easily as you could bottle up sorrows.
Creation, destruction, they’re all the same,
in the eyes of the horizon.
Chronos you old fool,
Distopian,
Strange,
Unblinking.
I wish I could lay a finger on the Milky Way,
Perhpas I will, tomorrow.
Believe it or not, the Calgary Public Library hosts poetry slam competitions and workshops every other week for youth! Check out this Facebook Page for more information! Be sure to also check out the other Spoken Word Festival events here, which run from April 17-22.