Hey BI, nice piece. But I’d like to suggest a different answer to the “the problem with SLAM” question. Caveat: this is a single answer and, of course, I know it’s much more complicated than that, but, as someone who slammed for years, and has attended slams on and off for years since, I want to put forward an particular idea you can agree or disagree with.
I think the problem with SLAM, generally and with very exceptions, is that SLAM poems are not usually “fresh” (I’ll explain what I mean by that in a bit) and the crowds (and the judges as an extension of the crowds) seem much more interested in hearing something warm, something that affirms a position or belief or feeling they have, then hearing something new. And poets either join the scene believing this should also be the case or get accultured to that expectation (“every poet speaking their own truth is valuable and great and wonderful”, etc., etc. etc.). And the result is an *endless* series of same poems over and over again (“I’m X minority and see how I’ve suffered,” “Yes, I’m white but I’m the good guy in my family”, etc.).
Frankly, I don’t care about any of that and frankly, it’s not needed. Of course all these positions matter, of course all these things need to be said and reaffirmed and fought for. Vigorously, passionately, and continuously until the world is repaired. But, really, we don’t need an endless series of mediocre SLAM poems to say them again and again and again.
Instead, I think, what SLAM (and performance poetry generally) should be guided by is this: Tell me something New. Or tell me something not new in a new way. Strive to be FRESH. For instance, tell me that poem about being a African-American man dealing with the police in some NEW way. Bring out a facet of the totality of related experiences and ideas and emotions that we haven’t seen before. And since this is PERFORMANCE poetry, that newness, that freshness, may not act;;y be in the text of the poem. It might be in the mode of delivery. But if there’s newness there, that could well be more than enough. And that is what poets should strive for. And that is what the community and culture of SLAM and performance should strongly encourage as a normative value. Let us hear the words of the poet and realize that at this or that moment in the piece we were…surprised. And the truly great poems, those are the ones that continue to surprise us even though we have heard them so many times before.
Great examples of what I mean would be RC Wieslowski (especially him) or Al Mader from Vancouver, Canada.
