The year is 2020 and I’m worried that we’ve forgotten what poetry sounds like. Our particular artistic epoch’s favoured form is, for lack of a better term, Instagram poetry. A lot has been said about Insta poets which I will not repeat here! But I will say that much of it reads like slam poetry while lacking an element of performance. Now, what I know as slam poetry is probably better known by the title “spoken word,” a type of poetry which emerged in the second half of the last century and emphasizes the performance of poetry. The word “slam” is often used to refer to a poetry slam, which is an event where poets perform and compete with each other. There are certain trends you’ll hear in the work performed at these events, but the mic is open, and anything might happen. Sometimes there’ll be rap, or skits, or something a little more like traditional written poetry (I have heard rhyming couplets). All of this, I think, can be comfortably called slam poetry: the poetry performed at a slam event.
So back to Instagram. Rupi Kaur’s aphoristic poetics seems to emulate the polemic confidence of slam. Komal Kapoor’s free verse is reminiscent of that which you can hear at the Drake Hotel. But when poetry lacks performance, a certain vitality is lost—as when poems are distributed via Instagram.. A poet’s mouth adds timbre, emphasis, emotion, and so much more to even meterless, rhymeless text. Just the pauses a performer takes make the poem engaging and provocative. Any poem can be performed countless ways, being born again each time it is spoken. But all of this is difficult, almost impossible, to communicate in text. To understand, I would ask you to listen to “For Estefani” by Aracelis Girmay. Girmay puzzles over a confusing bundle of syllables: ‘loisfoeribari’ and pronounces it again and again, in English and Spanish, finding a whole range of sounds within it. This does not come across at all well on the page, or it comes across in a way which does not measure up to the way Girmay performs it. If you’re interested, you can listen to all the slam poetry you want to online. Button Poetry is a great YouTube channel to start off with.
But something important to slam poetry is also missed by listening to a recording of it. Each slam show is an irreplaceable event tied to a unique community of performers. I like going to slam shows because they are unpredictable, even if none of the poets are a match for Aracelis Girmay. I will always be in awe of the woman who my friends and I call the “moon lesbian.” She briefly entered our lives at the open mic to describe fucking the moon in detail and then left, never to be seen again. It was not the best poem I heard that night, but it was unforgettable because it was unexpected. Not only that, it was a unique performance done for us. At the slam, everyone is on the poet’s team. We snap when we hear what we like, we cheer when poets forget their words and urge them to try again. Slam is special because you can participate in it, either as part of the audience or by taking the mic yourself. I have seen several poets go from participating in the open mic, to entering the slam itself, to making it to the finals. I highly encourage you not just to listen to slam, to enjoy the poetics of performance, but also to get involved with poetry in a way that you never could as an individual.
The two regular shows I like most are the Toronto Poetry Slam, held every few weeks at the Drake Hotel, and Hot Damn It’s A Queer Slam, a monthly slam at the Buddies in Bad Times Theater. But there’s a lot more slam going on in Toronto! So, start at the Drake, do your own research, and find the little community of performers that you like best.
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