Slam Bam!

“There were six cop cars, including the paddy wagon. Eight cops were standing in the middle of the street. The whole section of the street was closed. It was ridiculous -- all for poetry.” Jay Le, Manager of the Café Deux Soleils smiles as he remembers the headache last year when the Vancouver Slam Poetry Finals drew a record crowd.

Slam poetry in Vancouver and other BC locales has gained in popularity over the last few years because new audiences are consistently drawn in by the competition, energy, and emerging talent at these events. The Slammaster / MC at the Vancouver Poetry Slam (VPS), Graham Olds, says lately they’ve been selling out houses at the Café where people come to watch one of the most unusual competitions in the art world. “As a result of our success, we moved the poetry slam finals to a bigger venue, Heritage Hall,” to accommodate the growing interest.

Every odd Monday of the month, the Vancouver Poetry Slam (VPS) draws a sizable crowd to the regular slam competitions, but the audiences were even larger due to the season-end playoffs. Sixteen of the top-scoring poets performed their best work in front of packed houses for one of four spots on the slam team which will represent Vancouver at international competitions like the National Poetry Slam this year in Albuquerque, New Mexico August 11-13, or the Canadian Festival of the Spoken Word in Vancouver this October 11-15.

Slam started in the United States in the early 1980s, then spilled over into Canada in the mid-1990s. Marc Smith, the creator of slam, designed the format to ensure poets were accountable to their community. This accountability is achieved by using audience members as judges.

A poet performs an original piece within three minutes and is evaluated, Olympic-style, with scores ranging from 0 (poor) to 10 (excellent). The highest scores are typically awarded to the most energetic, inclusive and original pieces.

Slam poetry appears at first to be poetic stand-up comedy. But the laughs, when present, are the means, not the end. Poets dramatize their work with a kind of evangelical enthusiasm: they try to get a room of people to listen and respond. Success can often be more than just the highest score, but also the right response to the right words.

The Svelte Ms Spelt, one of the founders of the VPS, believes slam’s latest success can be pinpointed to a desire for a sense of community.

“The key, the reason why it survives is that it makes poets listen to the audience. People feel engaged. They feel a sense of ownership. It’s not just a night of entertainment. This slam belongs to everybody.”

Olds always insists we should “applaud the poet, not the score.” This may contradict the intent of the slam, but he says scores ensure poets don’t perform in a vacuum. It’s an instantaneous dialogue between poet and audience that other modern art forms haven’t caught on to yet.

And just as the poets are getting more skilled, so are the audiences: “If a poet is doing some trite and sucky stuff that’s very selfish and inward, they’re gonna screw you on the scores. And that’s what I love about the slam,” he says. The judges can be brutally honest or sympathetic. Unpredictable “gut” opinions mean that the same piece never gets the same reaction twice.

This season-end was unique as it was the first time in the history of the VPS playoffs where there were eight men and eight women in the competition; previous playoffs have been male-dominated. It’s something in which The Svelte Ms Spelt takes great pride.

“It’s a symptom of doing it right. We haven’t achieved that gender equity through quotas or anything else like that. We achieved it by creating a safe space for all to come and achieve excellence through competition in a friendly, supporting community. We build a team off the stage to build the team on the stage to represent us in international competitions.”

Many ears and eyes were on the new female poets because they were among the most successful this year. As the finals drew to a close in Heritage Hall, the new team was announced -- coincidentally as even-gendered as the playoffs had begun. Brendan McCloud, Barbara Adler, Zaccheus Jackson and Chrystalene Buhler won their places on the Vancouver team and will compete this August in Albuquerque.

At the beginning of every event, Olds religiously asks “How many people here have never been to a slam before?” Every time, about half the crowd raise their hands. These new faces at the Café Deux Soleils keep the poetry slam alive and maintain its roots of being accountable to the community.

Sean Minogue is the editor/publisher of BareBonesMagazine: Spoken Word Art in Focus, and is also an editorial assistant at The Vancouver Review. His new online column on Vancouver spoken word events will appear early this summer on Liftbook.com.