Greetings readers!

My fiance and I attended the finals for this year’s Rust Belt Poetry Slam last night. We decided to go to last night’s finals bout because a) there was an open mic right before the slam (I read “Be” at the open mic), and b) we wanted to see what the finals would be like, never having attended a poetry slam of this notoriety and magnitude.

We came in early – about 6:10 – because we wanted to make sure we got a good seat and that I could get on the open mic list. We purchased tickets ahead of time for the finals (go us!) so we just sat down, hung out, and watched everything kinda come together. The open mic started at 7:00. I along with several others read before the indie slam portion of finals, which started around 8 PM.

The whole thing was awesome, both the indie competition and the team finals. I heard people with some skill of words and some serious energy in that room. Images stick out in my mind of personal pain, obstacles, rejection, anger, community. I hope that someday I will be half the performance poet that these men and women are.

To be honest, the details of last night are still a swirling mess in my mind, so I’m having difficulty sorting things out. Some things I liked:

• Alvin Lau, who performed “Full Moon” and “For The Breakdancers”;
• Another poet answered the teacher who once told her that she couldn’t write;
• There was an unbelievable team piece done by the Cleveland slammers;
• A poet named WonderDave, who slammed about what we are to believe is “Sexy” from the media mogul minds of advertising;
• “The Gospel of the Matrix”, performed by Scott Woods of Writer’s Block Poetry;
• ALL of the poems performed by Dave of Columbus Black Pearl;
• Spike’s piece about riots, team rivalries, and Woody Hayes (“this is Jesus, and this is Woody Hayes”);
• Purity’s poem about a young, homeless, pregnant woman looking for answers (“Who Is God?”)
• A poem from Donielle of Writer’s Block about pimpin’ Girl Scout cookies (absolutely hilarious); and
• A poem in the form of an open letter to Muslim convenience store owners.

There of course were a LOT more poems performed last night, and I apologise if I’ve garbled anything. I have to admit that I left the room vibrating inside from all the energy flying around during the slam. This was the best damn thing I’ve ever seen. In fact, I did not hear one bad poem the entire night. That vibrating energy inside me inspired me to write five more poems last night and this morning – two of them are going up on the blog after this post.

And…my fiance and I together were asked to be one of the judges for the team finals. I’ve never judged a slam before. Awesome! We had so much fun. And we found out how interesting a judge’s job is – YOU will get booed quicker than the poet if the crowd doesn’t think your score is high enough for a poet’s performance. But I must emphasize the fun aspect of the slam – the poems are what matter, not the points.

Believe me folks…we WILL be back for more. We are poetry slam addicts. And I got enough inspiration for at least another week of writing. So…I will not do an experiment this week – I will just write in my normal style and see what happens. But I promise, more poetic form experiments will be forthcoming.

Thanks for reading,

Nicole