slam the first
Well, I went to a slam tonight.
Actually it wasn't so much a slam as it was a reading. At least the beginning bit was a reading mostly dominated by people who didn't seem to have a coherent thought in their heads. I mean, I'm not expecting poetry to make perfect sense. But it was exceedingly hard to string their thoughts into any coherent whole. And of course there wasn't really any context -- I noticed that the more experienced folks later on gave a few sentences of context so that you'd at least know what the poem was about.
It was fun. It was loud. It wasn't as high-energy as I've been led to believe some events are, but that's ok. I'll go to another soon. And I'll do some of my own stuff at one soon.
Featured poet was one Da'Shade Moonbeam -- if I remember the name correctly. He was an angry man with some useful stuff to say. And they did some poor man's rap as well -- in the sense of "this is stuff that you and I might go through" instead of a knockoff of the "bitchez an' hos an' bling" crap that I've largely associated the rap genre with. It was nice to have my eyes opened.
I could have sworn I saw Big Poppa E there -- short guy, bald, goatee, looked & sounded somewhat like I remember from videos. When he brought around the donation bucket & I asked, though, it wasn't him. I wanted it to be him, but alas. He seemed to be hosting the thing, and when he saw my open journal he smiled and said "You should read sometime!" I explained that I wanted to, and came to get a feel for the thing. That's as close to an invitation as I'm likely to get, so ... SlamNation here I come!
And I did write like 4-5 pages in my journal. So word up on that, and when I refine them into something intelligible, I'll share.
Actually it wasn't so much a slam as it was a reading. At least the beginning bit was a reading mostly dominated by people who didn't seem to have a coherent thought in their heads. I mean, I'm not expecting poetry to make perfect sense. But it was exceedingly hard to string their thoughts into any coherent whole. And of course there wasn't really any context -- I noticed that the more experienced folks later on gave a few sentences of context so that you'd at least know what the poem was about.
It was fun. It was loud. It wasn't as high-energy as I've been led to believe some events are, but that's ok. I'll go to another soon. And I'll do some of my own stuff at one soon.
Featured poet was one Da'Shade Moonbeam -- if I remember the name correctly. He was an angry man with some useful stuff to say. And they did some poor man's rap as well -- in the sense of "this is stuff that you and I might go through" instead of a knockoff of the "bitchez an' hos an' bling" crap that I've largely associated the rap genre with. It was nice to have my eyes opened.
I could have sworn I saw Big Poppa E there -- short guy, bald, goatee, looked & sounded somewhat like I remember from videos. When he brought around the donation bucket & I asked, though, it wasn't him. I wanted it to be him, but alas. He seemed to be hosting the thing, and when he saw my open journal he smiled and said "You should read sometime!" I explained that I wanted to, and came to get a feel for the thing. That's as close to an invitation as I'm likely to get, so ... SlamNation here I come!
And I did write like 4-5 pages in my journal. So word up on that, and when I refine them into something intelligible, I'll share.