a quick definition: A POETRY SLAM is a contest where poets have 3 minutes to perform an original piece of poetry. The emphasis is usually on performance & making the crowd feel you, but a well written piece can’t hurt. Judges randomly chosen from the audience then give Olympic style scores (0.0 thru 10.0). The National Poetry Slam happens every year at a different city & awards cash prizes to the winners.

WHY SLAM SUCKS
By P. Washington

Here’s the thing – you can’t measure my life. How am I gonna stand up in front of a room full of strangers & ask you to rate my pain? Let you compare it to the person who just went before me. Sooooo the poem about the stalker was better than the joint about the lady who works at a truck stop? Somewhere a poet pouts, “I wrote the stalker piece to help me get over a bad relationship!” Oh, so what - The lady working the truck stop was my MOM! Blah blah blah

I’ve heard that poets have tried to walk out into traffic after receiving what they felt were insulting scores (I can just hear cars speeding up on the road now). This is not being overly dramatic: when you share a poem, you share yourself, and the more personal that piece is to you, the more that shit hurts when you feel like it’s being rejected. A note to aspiring slam poets - If you’re NOT ready to perform your absolute favorite piece and get a zero point zero and be told to NEVER touch a pen again, then you shouldn’t ever slam.

UNFORTUNATELY, there is no shortage of confidence in your average slam poet. Egos can run amok off stage & throughout a venue, but they are always FED onstage. That 10 that dude got for bragging on himself just qualified him in his mind. Thanks judges! You’ve created a monster. Now I’ve gotta hear that poem again.


WHY SLAM ROCKS
By blackpicasso

With respect to all the past teams:
This years DC NATIONAL SLAM TEAM was TIGHT
Myself
Droopy Anderson (so funny you forget how dope he is and vice-versa)
Chris August (the token gay white guy – our secret weapon)
Twain Dooley (slam veteran – too clever for his own good)
Twain & I were the old fogeys – Chris & Droopy were the bright eyed bushy tailed newbies
We practiced like shaolin monks for 2 months
We never argued
Denise Johnson was our 5th wheel in spirit
She gave us all beautiful handmade necklaces for luck.
It was a 12 hour drive to Chicago.
Droopy talks like Huggy Bear 2003
He said things into his cell phone like “Everythangs Drew & the gang baby, just knock 7 times on the box that rocks & if James Earl Jones answers, just get on the mic before it get too hot & I’ll tell ya what’s heads or tails after I’m done flippin’ the dime… Okay…I love you too Ma…. “

Haiku
We blew in westward
Knowing even when you win
It’s all still hot air

Our 1st bout
DC against Fort Worth Texas & Orange California
We got waxed
Unprepared for the technical difficulties that arose (it was too small inside the club for the crowd so the slam was moved outside to an adjacent garden with a slanted stage & too poor sound quality to compete with the street noise) our team strategy unraveled & we got poor scores all around.

But I got to see Buddy Wakefield – he is dope on a stick

An hour later, Droopy, Twain & I were soaking our sorrows in long island ice teas which is around when I came up with this

Haiku
No matter how bad
Things look, spirits will always
Change your perspective

Chicagoans are some rude MF’s. Get caught lingering at an intersection they will run you over & back over your ass.
but
Chicago has some of the best restaurants. I never had a bad meal there. Shout out to West Egg on Ohio Street downtown.

Cleveland chicks talk ALOTTA smack but they still can’t play pool.
Also, I’ve apparently been shooting pool backwards with the wrong hand all these years.
(but hey, it’s been working for me)
Twain is a pool shark.

I saw Reggie Gibson & met his beautiful little girl.
Celena Glenn I don’t care if you only spit a sentence we’ve GOTS ta get you into the studio.
Sekou tha Misfit & Priest da Nomad were separated at birth
Samantha Raheem you are one of my all time favorites.
Shihan, I saw you but we didn’t get to build, what’s up with the poemcee track?

There should be an award for the most “crunk” team – a team that brings a lotta people & has bangin' women & who get the party started everytime they walk into a room. In the past it’s been Atlanta. This year it was Oakland. Oh yes, It was Oakland...

Standing out with 100 poets in front of The Chopin Theater downtown, I hear an unmistakable laugh so I peer across the crowd to see TONI ASANTE LIGHTFOOT & GARY LILEY, two DC legends living in Chicago now. Both of these people were instrumental in many poets artistic development. Especially me.

I met this cat Jaxon Grimm who gave me a flyer that read “Come to the Pickup Party & get some funk, hip hop, blunts, bitches & beer”. Dang, if he had only added fried chicken, I'd be in there.

The Hip Hop Slam wasn’t a slam at all, but an “8 Mile” style emcee battle (of course). I arrived in time to see the final match between Sage Francis from the Providence Slam team, this other German cat, and Ed Mabrey who kept stopping the beat to drop a capellas which is probably what got him eliminated. The final battle between the German dude & Sage was probably one of the most entertaining things I’ve seen in a long time. Sage skipped around the stage & rhymed like he was possessed, even dropping his pants & spitting venom at a homophobic cat in the audience who had already been eliminated. He shoulda won, but the novelty factor of the German MC won the audience over. After rhyming in what I guess was German for a few minutes, the only broken English that I heard him say was “You must learn my language, I’m the only gangster from the Alps, Biaaaaach!!” .

Before our 2nd bout, we regrouped & rededicated ourselves as a TEAM. With the knowledge that we had no chance at Semis, the pressure was off of us to do anything other than our best. Twain & I spent the day working together on his “courier” piece which I beat-boxed on, while Droopy & Chris tightened up their “Labrynithine” poem.
That night, we absolutely KILLED! With those two pieces, me doing “Epiphany” and all 4 of us performing together on Chris’ “ADD” piece, we straight waxed Alburquerque & San Antonio Texas. We did so well, the Nats committee asked us to perform at the Semifinal Showcase! It was truly a Rocky II-type moment. Much love to Felicia, Charniece, Sonya, Jarius and Big Bru for showing up & being louda than a mutha!
Come to think of it, our crew was pretty crunk too…


The Pittsburgh team are some cool peeps
I missed the erotica slam but I felt the tremors from a mile away
Jud “the snowman” Lewis got real busy at the cover slam
Every single night the party was at Holiday Inn room 2605 – I don’t even know whose room that WAS….

Alot of the established & more popular slammers either didn't come this year (Al & Bassey I missed y’all) or they came but didn't participate. That kinda affected the level of poetry that you heard with so many newbies on the mic.

Oh by the way – The Finals was won by LA who used our SAME 2nd night strategy & performed 3 incredibly choreographed group pieces to finish ahead of Oakland, Austin & the Nuyorican.

All in all, mission accomplished. We spread the good word of poetry from DC/B-more and made some good Western contacts, which I think we sorely needed. Although our team didn't do as well as in the past I felt this was the RICHEST experience because we got to see the BEST and the WORST that slam had to offer all at once…


Slam ain’t perfect, but It’s mine…

I know I should end
With a haiku but I just
Can’t think of one now


Pic!


blackpicasso - 4:20 PM
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8.15.2003