Slam Poetry

Slam poetry, or simply slam, began in the late 1980s in Chicago, Illinois, by a local poet and construction worker, Mark Smith. Smith felt that poetry readings and poetry in general had lost their true passion and had an idea to bring poetry back to the people. He created a weekly poetry event where anyone could participate. Poets would then be judged by five random audience members on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 was the worst poem they ever heard and 10 was the best. Out of the five, the high and low scores were dropped and the three remaining scores were added to give the poet an overall score. Whoever had the highest score at the end of the competition was deemed the winner.

Slams were the first poetry event that combined the elements of performance, writing, competition, and audience-participation. The name slam came from how the audience had the power to praise or, sometimes, destroy a poem and in the nature of the high-energy performance-style of the poets.

Smith also created a unique set of rules to slam:

• 1.
  Anyone, no matter their age, race, sex, education, class, disability, gender, or sexuality, can compete.
• 2.
  Poems can be about any subject.
• 3.
  Poems are not to exceed a 3-minute and 10-second time limit; if they do, points are deducted.
• 4.
  No props may be used when performing the poem.
• 5.
  No musical accompaniment or musical instruments may be used when performing, but the poet is allowed to sing, clap, hum, or make noise with body-parts or the mouth.
• 6.
  Poets may perform on their own or in group-pieces with other poets.
• 7.
  Anyone who competes in a slam may call themselves a slam-poet.
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• 8.
  Any piece performed at a slam may be called a slam-poem.

Slam is also a form of performance-poetry that attempts to reach a broad audience in a short amount of time. Slams are held in any venue that welcomes them, such as parks, bookstores, coffee-houses, and bars (where the first slams originated).

Today, slam is considered an artistic movement, as well as a genre of poetry and spoken word. Slam has inspired hundreds of slams across the United States, Canada, parts of Europe, and Japan, while slam-poets have influenced many aspects of modern culture, such as political movements, art, media, literature, and entertainment. Smith's vision also spawned The National Poetry Slam, an annual, 4-day poetry slam held in a different American city each year, where teams of four poets compete from cities all over the United States and Canada to determine who is best in the genre. The National Poetry Slam is the most attended poetry event in the world. Though a number of poets find the competitive nature of slam to be unfair and the nature of the poems to be too informal and unconventional, it is still deemed one of the most accessible forms of poetry available and is the most common, universal forms of performance-poetry experienced by audiences.