Chris Gusta reads a new poem he wrote at Poetrynight Monday at the Anker Café. Gusta will perform in the slam on Nov. 16. Photo by Hailey Tucker

Six poets will compete for a prize of more than $100 and the title of Grand Slam champion.  The slam will be held at 8 p.m., Nov. 16, in Jinx Art Space. The event is put on by Poetrynight, an organization that holds weekly poetry readings at the Anker Café, located at 1424 Cornwall Ave.

During a poetry slam, each poet has three minutes to perform an original piece that is immediately scored by five judges. After everyone has performed twice, the two poets with the highest scores compete in the third-and-final round. Judges are randomly picked from the audience.

“A blessing and a curse about slam poetry is that you never know, going in, what the judges are going to think,” said competing poet Jessica Lohafer, a Western junior majoring in English literature.   “You can’t make any predictions, because the judges are [almost] always people who have never been to a poetry slam before.”

The poets who accumulated the highest total scores for the year made it to the Grand Slam.

Western senior and poet Robyn Bateman said slams are sometimes pegged as a gimmick to get people to listen to poetry, but that just does not tell the whole story.
Bateman said the urgency, the rhythm and the musicality of spoken-word poetry are what draw her to compete in slams.

“You can definitely have that in written poetry, but I feel like when you’re speaking it, it just turns into a song without music,” she said. “You get in this zone where you’re not really thinking anymore.”

In addition to the weekly readings, Poetrynight has been holding slam competitions every month since December 2008.

As the elder statesman of the bunch, full-time poet Jack McCarthy, 66, has been performing at poetry slams since the mid-1990s.

One of the first things he said he learned about slams was the importance of memorizing each poem—not just to impress the judges, but so he can see how the crowd reacts.

“When I found out what a joy it was—what at thrill, really—to be able to look my audience in the eye while I was delivering the poem and to watch their faces change, I thought, ‘Wow, this is what I was born to do,’” he said.

His poems touch on subjects such as alcoholism, poverty and death.  Not exactly cheery topics on the surface, but he has won several awards as a love and humor poet.

McCarthy said most of the audience comes to a slam to watch a contest, while poets are more concerned with watching each other perform.

“That’s one thing that really surprised me about the poetry slam. I thought it would be cutthroat competitive until I got into it,” he said. “I found out that practically everybody understands that it is all about the show.”

Bateman said she started going to Poetrynight readings in February, when she was taking a slam poetry class with Western English professor Bruce Beasley.
She said even now, months after her first reading, it is still nerve-wracking to perform.

“Every time, before I get up to a mic, I’m almost peeing-my-pants nervous,” Bateman said. “It’s not even so much, ‘What if these people don’t like my poetry?’  It’s more, ‘What if I can’t remember my poetry?’”

Lohafer said she has to keep reminding herself to take her time and breathe during a performance so she does not trip over her words.

Despite slam poetry’s aggressive-sounding name, Lohafer said sometimes the most restrained performances are the ones that do the best.

 “You don’t have to be excessively aggressive or angry or loud, which is the stereotype of what slam poetry has to be,” she said. “I think you can be quiet and contemplative and sort of different from what people expect, but you have to present it in a way that makes people believe what you’re saying, because that’s the most important thing.”

McCarthy, Bateman, Gusta, Lohafer, Robert Lashley and Melissa Queen will compete Nov. 16.

“Our hope is that this week they’ll come for the slam, maybe next week they’ll come back for the poetry,” McCarthy said.

Tickets for the Grand Slam are $7 and can be purchased at the door or online at www.poetrynight.org. 

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