I have just watched Slamnation, an entertaining documentary about the 1996 national Slam contest in the US. Slam poetry originated in punk-era America from the idea of applying the format of a boxing match to poetry performance. While its Boston founder Marc Smith was trying to break the relationship between the 'literary' poet and the reverent audience member, in San Fransisco Gary Glazner was presenting the poetry bouts as performance art, bringing the boxing aesthetic to the fore and revealing the competitive element as absurdist.
"Unbeknown to Marc it was a very Cagian way to present the poetry," Glazner is quoted as saying in this history of slam, "Not unlike casting the I-ching to determine the instrument to be used in a performance. It left a lot up to chance to determine the evening. We were coming from a Cagian mentality. The judges were totally different every night."
In the same on-line article, it is interesting to read the views of another original Slam founder, Anna Brown, who broke ranks on artistic grounds:
"Performance art is an extensive concept based in theoretical work, whereas to me a lot of the good performance poets have great theatrical personalities and happen to be great writers. They usually don't have any background in art theory or the various art movements."
The film is entertaining, and its young, passionate stars have since become moderately succesful artists (well, they've got lots of MySpace friends at least). I Googled them all, and the most interesting of my findings included an open letter to Oprah Winfrey written by Slam participant Saul Williams, in which he tries to answer a question she asked on her talk show: Are all rappers poets?
His response hints both at why he broke away from conventional hip hop to become a Slam poet, and why he rejected the competetive element of the Slam contests:
"...The most popular emcees of our age are often those that claim to be heartless or show no feelings or signs of emotion. The poet, on the other hand, is the one who realizes that their vulnerability is their power."
He also states that this negative 'heartless' aspect of hip hop is only a reflection of society at large, quoting George Bush's initial response to the September 11th attacks, in which Bush called upon the nation to '...show no sign of vulnerability'.
Though introducing a competitive mentality to poetry, Marc Smith's intention with Slam was to bring the community together to 'listen to each other's words'. Another contestant in the film, Beau Sia, gives a hilarious on-line account of what drove him post-Slam:
Beau Sia
"[1998] was the year pop singer jewel tried to kill it by deciding she could write a book. [...] it was in the hands of every middle school girl in the country, and it was disgusting. when it seemed there was nothing to do but lie down and take it, nyc based poet beau sia told jewel to fuck off. in four hours, he turned out his own book [...] an exercise in the poetic retort. [...] sia's version of "wolves in the canyon" is: i could never write a poem/ about wolves in the canyon/ so don't/ expect me to." jewel's is five times longer-and actually about wolves in the canyon."
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