Slam Last Night and 24-Hour Prep
Last night's slam was a little tough, but fun.
I went in with two new poems, "Milk" and "Scars". I was saving these for the 24-hour feature this weekend but wanted to keep performing decent new stuff all the time, so I pulled them out. Of the new stuff I've written recently, these and the ones I did last week are about the shortest ones so far. Most everything else is probably double the length of these.
"Milk" was an idea I've had for a little while. I wanted to know who the first kid on a milk carton was and write something about that experience, not about his kidnapping, but about encountering absence. Did a load of research, started the potter's wheel turning and voila! It turned out really well (though I shaved some parts for the slam). I LIKE this piece. I ran that in the first round and took first going into the second round.
Second round I did "Scars" which had been written prior to that day, but not edited. I did an edit yesetrday between work and the show, ran it a couple of times, then bounced.
At the end of the night, I won the slam. Two weeks of win!
We had a lot of poetry night crossover (Will Evans, et al.). Also had a couple of poets start to turn their respective corners: Katrina has safely found her stage voice and is now on the hunt for the poems to go with it, and Louise (who came in third) really killed it in the first round; right poem, right performance, right time. We'd been going over her second poem - the period poem - a lot this week and it was good to see some of her choices play out in it. Very proud of these two in particular.
Poets: Maybe people thought that the 8 people we had in the last slam was a sign, but look at our stats over the years: we almost ALWAYS run a packed, 12-poet slam. And while that list doesn't always fill up by 8:00, it certainly can and has. As the season presses on and people's rush for teams and points gets more intense, that happens faster and faster. At least five poets got shut out of slamming last night (and some left early!) and they were there by 8:10. It would have been six but someone stepped out of the slam to make room for the first person who came in to sign up and would have been cut, JG.
So my advice is, don't show up at 8:05 for our show if you want to slam, especially if Joanna is running it.
A number of people have mentioned to me that they really like the new expansion of the no-repeat rule (no repeats all year long) and the way we've changed the judge picking (before the break and with more spiel on consistency)...and by people I mean audience members. That's what it's all about, man. I'm telling you now: old work will start hurting you in our venue. You have been warned. With old work, if the room knows where it's going, the room won't carry you over the judges. You're the one who has to perform, not the audience.
Tired, but pleased...and still got a lot of work to do before Saturday.
Ah, Poet Thanksgiving!
I went in with two new poems, "Milk" and "Scars". I was saving these for the 24-hour feature this weekend but wanted to keep performing decent new stuff all the time, so I pulled them out. Of the new stuff I've written recently, these and the ones I did last week are about the shortest ones so far. Most everything else is probably double the length of these.
"Milk" was an idea I've had for a little while. I wanted to know who the first kid on a milk carton was and write something about that experience, not about his kidnapping, but about encountering absence. Did a load of research, started the potter's wheel turning and voila! It turned out really well (though I shaved some parts for the slam). I LIKE this piece. I ran that in the first round and took first going into the second round.
Second round I did "Scars" which had been written prior to that day, but not edited. I did an edit yesetrday between work and the show, ran it a couple of times, then bounced.
At the end of the night, I won the slam. Two weeks of win!
We had a lot of poetry night crossover (Will Evans, et al.). Also had a couple of poets start to turn their respective corners: Katrina has safely found her stage voice and is now on the hunt for the poems to go with it, and Louise (who came in third) really killed it in the first round; right poem, right performance, right time. We'd been going over her second poem - the period poem - a lot this week and it was good to see some of her choices play out in it. Very proud of these two in particular.
Poets: Maybe people thought that the 8 people we had in the last slam was a sign, but look at our stats over the years: we almost ALWAYS run a packed, 12-poet slam. And while that list doesn't always fill up by 8:00, it certainly can and has. As the season presses on and people's rush for teams and points gets more intense, that happens faster and faster. At least five poets got shut out of slamming last night (and some left early!) and they were there by 8:10. It would have been six but someone stepped out of the slam to make room for the first person who came in to sign up and would have been cut, JG.
So my advice is, don't show up at 8:05 for our show if you want to slam, especially if Joanna is running it.
A number of people have mentioned to me that they really like the new expansion of the no-repeat rule (no repeats all year long) and the way we've changed the judge picking (before the break and with more spiel on consistency)...and by people I mean audience members. That's what it's all about, man. I'm telling you now: old work will start hurting you in our venue. You have been warned. With old work, if the room knows where it's going, the room won't carry you over the judges. You're the one who has to perform, not the audience.
Tired, but pleased...and still got a lot of work to do before Saturday.
Ah, Poet Thanksgiving!