Slam poetry perspective
A slam poetry is a poetic tournament in which the participants face in real time through short recitals, of a few minutes, to an audience that acts as a jury through votes. In the Slams, each author reads his or her own poem. Those who receive the best score go on to a second round until the final elimination.
Slam poetry lends itself to expressing the inner discourse of each person and is manifested through various themes such as: suffering, childhood, loneliness, family, identity, bullying, anger, depression, suicide and old age, among others.
The language of slam tells what it is or has been about the lives of those who tell, and is usually based on their emotions, comments or reactions to it. The act of telling and retelling seems to be one of the most common textual characteristics. And, on the other hand, the use of humor and irony is also generally very popular among viewers.
The slam poem is a tool for introspection and can be used in classes for that purpose, although it is little known among teachers and is taught merely to comply with the evaluation of an academic production and not to develop language skills that are truly integrated and transferable by students, such as working with oral and written expression.
Using slam poetry as a class topic is an excellent way to create a reflection about each student, each one should look for an exciting topic, or something they want to talk about a lot, through this there is a rapprochement between classmates, teacher and people who listen because the speaker has shown us a significant part of himself.
The slam poem can go into the world of literature because we play with the text, it’s not a traditional poem but it’s not a narrative text either, it’s the combination of both and many more characteristics, we can add rhymes, metaphors, play with the initial and final words, etc. Besides, you have the possibility of being in two worlds, the traditional one, writing the poem at your own pace, and the technological one as it was in our case to finish the activity, there we had the opportunity to give it meaning with images and music to represent the text and generate a deeper interpretation of what happens in the poem for the audience.
Behind this unconventional activity you can find writing or oral genius when writing or expressing your poem, most students sometimes wish that some of their activities were not only based on academics but on things like this, out of the ordinary, that some few knew and the others were new to the subject. All of us who created the poem will always have the best memories of this and the best comments from the teacher as we listen to them and give us support and motivation to get on with life.
