Shakesperian Asides: Remain Focused

By Brother Said

From the moment you arrive at the slam venue, you are in competition, so take everything you hear with a grain of salt, and be careful about what you say. There are fellow poets sincerely in need of advice. But be careful. You don't want to be drained by someone who wants to recite their whole poem to you just before the competition to see what you think. Such people drain you of your energy, and mess up your focus. Tell them politely you will be all too willing to help them after the slam. By the same token be careful who you listen to when advice is offered unsolicited. Some experienced poets sincerely want to help others, and when they do they will give you good tips. But some poets are ultra competitive and will give you bad advice on purpose. Some may not know what they are talking about and may want to appear knowledgeable. The bottom line: slam competition requires your focus. Be careful who you allow to interrupt that focus.

Then there are the slam myths. If you are a novice slammer, you may hear various commentary before, during, and after the slam competition: rhetoric that threatens to cloud your sense of purpose and ruin your confidence in applying strategy. One such myth is the “you need slam poems to win ” myth. Don't listen to that foolishness. There is no such thing as a “slam poem”, though you will hear that term a lot in your slam career. We play the poetry slam game with poetry period, ideally, performance poetry – though you will see all types of poetic styles. Another myth is the “there is no formula to winning” myth, which implies that there is no strategy that works at all. Don't listen to that foolishness, either. There are reasons why you win a poetry slam. There are reasons why some poets win consistently – and it can't be that their poetry is just better than every body else's in every slam. What ever those reasons are, that's a strategy. Poetry slam is a positional game and there are ways to play your poems in the various positions and ways not to play your poems.

by Brother Said

The most harmful myth though, usually propagated by an over zealous host or emcee, is that poetry slam is not about the competition or points. Most of the time just smile when you hear that and clap like everybody else, but absolutely ignore that foolishness. Sometimes that type of commentary is just filler, stuff for the host to say while he waits for the score. Other times it's an over zealous emcee polarizing the judges with ill advised, vociferous commentary. During crucial contests, if you feel it's prejudiced the judges against you, file a protest. The official definition of poetry slam is “competitive performance poetry”, and the emcee's personal opinion that they think poetry slam should not be about the competition may wrongly influence the judges. The judges should only be influenced by the poets presenting their poetry.

Shakesperian Asides: Volunteer to be a Judge

by Brother Said

Want to know how hard the judges have it? Before you start your slam career, volunteer to be a judge. You may learn what I learned when I volunteered to be a judge: you make your decisions based on emotion. Most judges are instructed by the host or emcee to give the score they feel the poem deserves. And that's what judges do - but it ain't easy. There's some inner conflict with your logical self, but there is no time for complex deliberation. You want to be fair. I had my own personal criteria which I thought was rather informed and efficient since I'm a poet – but I ended up scoring some poems without much deliberation, but based on emotion. Some people I was biased against the minute they hit the stage.

There is some scientific basis for this. Modern technology has made it possible to see the brain working in real time. Over the past ten years of brain studies the old notions that human beings think logically has been dispelled. Peoples brains have been studied in real time to see whether they funnel decisions through the logical part of their brain in the frontal lobe or through the emotional part in the back of the brain. What's been discovered? Every decision everybody makes very rarely goes through the deliberative, logical front part of the brain, but most decisions are made with the emotional portion of the brain first, even the most crucial decisions.

And that gets to the main point about poetry slam: judges aren't taking your poem home to study it. They have from 30 seconds to a minute to make a decision right then and there at the slam. Since all human beings make all their decisions emotionally anyway, what is a slam judge going to do? Slam judges go with their gut feeling - which includes comparing your poem to the poems that just preceded you. That's where the second premise of positional truth comes from. The judges scores are based not just on how good your poem is, but also where your poem fits in the order. So don't take the judges score personally. And volunteer to be a judge to see what it's like. It just might make you a better, more understanding slam competitor.