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Last updated 9/16/06
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Competitive Slamming and the Spoken Word

The "spoken word" forum and the poetry slam have become popular enough to receive the focus of media attention including major motion pictures and MTV. A poetry slam is a cross between a poetry reading and a pugilist competition with only a metaphorical slugfest. Poets get on stage and read a poem while judges chosen randomly from the audience score the poems. The competition actually has its roots in ancient Greek and Roman times.

According to the book "Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry" by Gary Max Glazner (Maniac D Press, 2000), the poetry slam began in

earnest around 1986 in Chicago. In the next few years, poetry slams sprung up in larger cities around the country and, in 1990, Glazner produced the first-ever

National Slam in San Francisco. National Slams have been produced every year since.

What is Spoken Word

Spoken word is a form of poetry that's written to be read aloud. Because it is meant for an audience of listeners, spoken-word poems often contain a predominance of musical elements (repetition, rhyme, alliteration, etc.) and may even call for foot stomping, hand clapping, singing, or other physical elements that add emphasis to the poem.

Spoken-word poems tend not to work as well on the page as they do read aloud, though that is not necessarily the case. The spoken-word poet is concerned largely with the oral quality of the poem and how the audience will receive it.

Subject matter for spoken-word poems tend to be highly personal or political, often using material that will titillate the audience. The poems are largely narrative, telling a story that the audience (and the judges) will have some kind of reaction to.

How a Slam Works

The "slam open" is for anyone who wants to participate and try for a chance to move up to the invitational slam (made up of the winners of the slam open), the participants of which may move up to the semifinals, the finals, the Grand Slam, and ultimately, the National Slam. At the slam open, poets read one poem in round one that they hope will get them into round two. Poets who don't make it into round two have to come back the following week if they want another chance.

Before the slam begins, the MC will choose judges at random from the audience. These judges need not be versed in poetry; they just have to be willing to judge, which can become a tense experience if you judge an audience favorite poet or poem too low. Judging is from 0 to 10 (low --> high), and uses decimal points so that there is less of a chance of a tie.

Poems are judged on content and performance, but mainly on performance usually. Often there is a poet who is notable at the slam. One who is is loved by the audience and who tends to win often. Poets who read first are at a disadvantage; the crowd is not warmed up yet (sometimes not tipsy enough, in some cases) and tends to score the first few slammers lower than they would have later in the evening. If you can help it, jockey for a reading position as late in the slam as possible, when the scores tend to be higher. While this might sound like serious stuff, the slam is actually fun. People are hyped up to hear great poems, and there is a lot of laughter, general silliness, heckling, and the occasional very powerful poem. Even if you don't have the courage to participate, try to attend a slam.

If you can't find a reading series, open mic, or slam near you, or you feel that your community could use another poetry venue, consider starting one yourself. You can approach coffee shops, bars and bookstores for the space, most of which will be agreeable to provide the space for, if you can deliver new customers for them. If you start your own series you can invite published poets to read, and have your open mic after the reading, that way you will have a built-in audience for the open mic.

The Lyric Poem

Lyric poetry is a type of poetry that has its roots in song and music, and is characterized today by the short, personal, highly imagistic and sensory poem. It is named for the lyre (also lyra), a small stringed instrument of the harp family, used by the ancient Greeks to accompany singing and recitation. As an experiment, pen a short, perhaps 20-line poem, of a personal nature -- try to render an event that happened to you today into verse. Make it short, imagistic, and try to use as many of the senses as you can.

Lyric poems come in all shapes and sizes but share one common trait -- they are musical. It does not tell a story as narrative poetry does, describing events or action in the external world, but focuses intensely on a subject and tries to evoke emotions within the listener. Instead of using notes, as in music, the lyric poet relies on words and poetic devices -- metaphor, simile, cadence, meter, rhyme, voice, etc. The lyric poet's job is two fold: to investigate and/or re-create moments, objects, living things, concepts or experiences and to expound on them musically, using poetic devices to reveal their true essence.

Not only can lyric poetry be broken into typical topics -- such as moment, object, living thing, concept or experience -- but also into modes of expression, including: investigate the meaning of a concept; investigate the essence of an image or object; re-create and alter a personal or public experience to understand it; re-create a talent or investigate an encounter so others may partake in it; re-create an experience that did not, cannot, or has yet to happen.

Performance Poetry

Performance poetry is meant to be performed in front of a live audience (as opposed to a recording or radio broadcast). Performance poets may not care as much about how their poem looks on the page as how it sounds when they read it, though this is not always the case. Performance poets may spend time practicing reading their poems and place their emphasis on their performance. Poetry's roots are in performance and it is often forgotten that poetry originated as an oral and aural art.

International Directory of Literary Agents & Agencies That Handle Poets

PLEASE NOTE: Your manuscript can be thoroughly protected by registering with the Writers Guild or Library of Congress Copyright Office before sending it to any literary agent or agency. Source: WritersNet.

The Dramatic Monologue

The dramatic monologue, or dramatic lyric, is kind of a cross between the persona poem and the epistle poem. The dramatic monologue is written in the voice of one speaker, usually telling a story of some kind, and usually a persona. The assumption with this kind of poem is that the speaker is alone, speaking alone, usually aloud. The dramatic is used in dramatic verse.

Even though you write your own poems, you do not necessarily have to be the speaker. Assuming another voice, playing a role, or putting on a mask or other identity change, are alternative creative strategies. A "method acting" approach can be taken while penning the poems in which you create and assume another character and talk as he or she would. If you feel unable to escape your inner self, and too limited by personal experiences, try writing a dramatic monologue.

Useful Books

In the Victorian Age, Robert Browning pioneered the form, modeling his work on the soliloquies of Elizabethan drama. Rather than present a whole play he chose to highlight the chief dramatic moment and to confine himself to the voice of a single character in monologues like "My Las Duchess," "Andrea del Sarto," "Fra Lippo Lippi," and "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister." Even the titles reveal how far Browning delved into history and the arts to create his monologues, speaking from a point of view of an Italian duke, or a Renaissance painter, or an evil monk. One thing a monologue requires is that you know something beyond the borders of your own life experience, or can imagine it fully. A character in a play who delivers a soliloquy both addresses the audience (as in an aside) and talks to himself. We hear him, in effect, thinking aloud. The speaker of a dramatic monologue can do those things as well, but often he or she addresses a particular person, either another character we must imagine listening, or the recipient of a letter. The voice assumed by the poet is sometimes called a persona, the Greek word for "mask" (since the actors in Greek plays wore stylized masks during performances). You might think of this persona as a disguise that allows you to delve into subjects you could not explore otherwise, to free yourself to deal with otherwise unencountered matters and experiences.

Persona Poems

The persona poem is one that enables the writer to take on another identity, or to write as someone or something else. If you write in your own identity (with your own experience, opinions and values) often enough you can notice that your poems have a similar sound, a similar voice. The persona poem forces you to write in another voice, to experiment with the tone and diction.

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