What is poetry slam?
Simply put, poetry slam is the competitive art of performance poetry. It puts a dual emphasis on writing and performance, encouraging poets to focus on what they're saying and how they're saying it.
Poetry Slam in the Classroom, Where Student Voice Matters
A poetry slam is a competitive event in which poets perform their work and are judged by members of the audience. Typically, the host or another organizer selects the judges, who are instructed to give numerical scores (on a zero to 10 or one to 10 scale) based on the poets' content and performance.
Who gets to participate?
Slams are open to everyone who wishes to sign up and can get into the venue. Though everyone who signs up has the opportunity to read in the first round, the lineup for subsequent rounds is determined by the judges' scores. In other words, the judges vote for which poets they want to see more work from.
What
are the rules?
Each poem must be of the poet's own construction.
Each poet gets three minutes (plus a ten-second grace period) to read one poem. If the poet goes over time, points will be deducted from the total score.
The poet may not use props, costumes or musical instruments.
Of the scores the poet received from the five judges, the high and low scores are dropped and the middle three are added together, giving the poet a total score of 0-30.
Rules
History
What are the two criteria upon which poetry performances are judged?
What is the one limitation placed upon a poem's content?
What are the time limitations for each perfomance?
How many judges traditionally judge a poetry slam?
What city held the first national poetry slam?
A member of what team coined the phrase, "The point is not the points, the point is the poetry"?
Who originated poetry slam?
(cc) photo by theaucitron on Flickr
(cc) photo by theaucitron on Flickr
Developing Voice
Poets who appear to be s______ score best.
F___ is more important than rhyme or rhythm.
SLAM poetry uses r_________ like a wheel uses a hub and all the spokes link to the hub.
A Slammin' Quiz
1984
1995
1990
(cc) image by jantik on Flickr
1984 . . . Construction worker and poet Marc Smith starts a poetry reading series at a Chicago jazz club, the Get Me High Lounge, looking for a way to breathe life into the open mike poetry format. The series' emphasis on performance lays the groundwork for the poetry which will be exhibited in slam.
1986 . . . Smith approaches Dave Jemilo, the owner of the Green Mill (a Chicago jazz club and former haunt of Al Capone), with a plan to host a weekly poetry competition on the club's slow Sunday nights. Jemilo welcomes him, and on July 25, the Uptown Poetry Slam is born. Smith draws on baseball and bridge terminology for the name, and institutes the basic features of the competition, including judges chosen from the audience and cash prizes for the winners. The Green Mill evolves into a mecca for performance poets, and the Uptown Poetry Slam still continues nearly 15 years after its inception.
1987 . . . Ann Arbor, Michigan becomes the home of the second oldest slam series in August; New York, San Francisco, and Fairbanks, Alaska follow. New York's home base, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the East Village, eventually becomes one of the best-known homes for slam.
1990 . . . The first-ever national slam is held on October 18 in San Francisco, featuring four-person teams from Chicago and San Francisco and an individual poet from New York. The Chicago team wins the debut team competition, and Chicago's Patricia Smith wins the individual competition.
1993 . . . Chicago hosts a national competition featuring teams from eight cities, including future powerhouses Boston and Cleveland and the first team from New York, and organizer Marc Smith coins the term National Poetry Slam to promote the event. The Chicago team repeat as champions and premiere the first-ever group piece in Nationals competition. The three-minute time rule is introduced, including an on-stage clock, but Chicago poet and individual champion Lisa Buscani appeals to the audience to rescind the rule for the finals, and officials concur. While the three-minute rule remains in future years, the on-stage clock does not.
1994 . . . The Fifth National Poetry Slam is held in Asheville, North Carolina, won by the Cleveland team and individual competitor Gayle Danley, representing Atlanta. Allan Wolf coins the phrase, "The points are not the point; the point is poetry," which becomes one of the principal rallying cries for proponents of the movement.
1996 . . . Filmmaker Paul Devlin brings a documentary crew to the Nationals in Portland to shoot SlamNation, which will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival two years later.
1998 . . . The documentary Slam Nation (focusing on finalist teams from New York, Providence, Berwyn, Ill., and Austin at the '96 Nationals) premieres at the Sundance Film Festival, and garners critical attention that includes positive reviews from the New York Times and the Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert.
1999 . . . Poetry Slam, Inc. files for official non-profit status as the umbrella organization for slam as the number of certified slams in North America reaches 75.
The three main elements of a good SLAM poem are:

1. Rhythm—--Even though SLAM poetry is written in free verse (no rules), it has a definite driving rhythm, but not a regular rhythm like in limericks. The rhythm is more closely related to the free verse rhythm that keeps the poem moving from one line to the next.

2. Repetition--—SLAM poetry uses repetition like a wheel uses a hub and all the spokes link to the hub. SLAM poets return to the same word or phrase multiple times with in the poem to keep the reader returning time and again to the central focus.

3. Rhyme—--While there is not a specific rhyme scheme, like in a limerick, the rhyme in SLAM poetry is used to direct the reader's ear toward a particular idea or theme. The entire poem is never rhyming. Rhyme is used in delicate balance with rhythm and repetition as a tool for the poet.

How to Write a SLAM poem . . .

First, start with a cause! What are you passionate about?  What are you angry about? What needs change in your world? What makes you feel?

Start with those issues that you want to address.

Next, make a word bank of important words that you want to include in your poem. Listen to how the words and phrases sound. Are there any that you could hinge your poem around?

Finally, start writing! Say your words aloud to hear them. After all, it is going to be read aloud! "Humanities Hub." teachers.saschina.org.
Katie Makkai
one f bomb
Andi Kauth
Shane Hawley
f bombs
Sierra DeMulder
disturbing content
Haiku Death Match
Saul Williams
Taylor Mali
Taylor Mali
not school appropriate but fun
Kyle Myhre (Guante)
Khary Jackson (6 is 9)
Poems that flow tend to score well, yet over-rhyming for three minutes can be a painful thing to launch on an audience. Subject matter is wide-open, free speech. Strong, unique metaphors work. Belabored or trite metaphors often score low. Writing a poem for performance pushes the poet to really consider audience in their use of voice, inflection, pacing and content; to fine tune the piece, edit, yet still remain true to herself or himself. I personally think the best poems are the ones that are the most sincere. Michael Klam. Creative-Writing-Now.com.
bawdy
W.7-8.1-2.d: "Establish and maintain a formal style [+W.9-12.1-2.d]and objective tone . . ."
RL.11-12.". . . analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including . . .language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful."
RI.9-10.6 "Analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance [a] point of view or purpose."
An Incomplete Slam Bibliography

Algarin, Miguel. Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Café.
     Holt Paperbacks. 1994.

Devlin, Paul, dir. Slam Nation: The Sport of Spoken Word
     [film, R with educational mode]. 2005.

Down to the Bone: Seattle Poetry Slam’s Grand Slam [film,
     NR]. 2006.

Eleveld, Mark. The Spoken Wordrevolution. Sourcebooks
     MediaFusion. 2005.

Eleveld, Mark. The Spoken Wordrevolution Redux.
     Sourcebooks MediaFusion. 2007.

Kaufman, Alan and S. A. Griffin, ed. The Outlaw Bible of
     American Poetry. Thunder’s Mouth Press. 1999.

Medina, Tony and Louis Rivera, ed. Bum Rush the Page: A
     Def Poetry Jam. Broadway. 2001.

Olson, Alix, ed. Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the
     Spoken Word Revolution. Seal Press. 2007.

Ortega, Jordi, dir. Poetry Slam [film NR]. 2010.

Poetry SLAM SAFE for Students [film PG]. 2009.

Slam [film R]. 1999.

Smith, Marc. Take the Mic: The Art of Performance Poetry,
     Slam, and the Spoken Word. Sourcebooks MediaFusion.
     2009.

from "Building a Soverignty Curriculum," 
Denny Hurtado, OSPI's Director of Indian Eduction, "The third goal is really just to educate non-Indians more about who we really are as a people, what our government is like, what treaties mean, and what it is like to be oppressed and deprived of our language, culture, and history for so many years.
So what?
and
What if?
Here's a thought:
What if we turned all the objective and formal argument papers into poetry slam pieces?
Just a thought :-)
S
t
d
e
n
t

P
e
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Adult Pen
Harley Bates
Tyler Schuh
Garrett Beckemeyer
Kevin Cashion
one f bomb
Michaela Roath
one f bomb and one angry hell