Knocking Off the Slam Dust
Last night I slammed at the Writers' Block show for the first time in about a year. Competitively, I mean, not like a haiku deathmatch or something equally devoid of the ballast of reward. It felt good, though what's not changed is the pressure writing. I wrote both pieces I performed last night, uh, last night.
It's hard to say that without sounding like a braggart. Believe me, I am not bragging. I tried to write something of merit days before and it just wasn't clicking. And while words were coming out, they just didn't resonate with me, or in one spectacular blaze of failure, the experiment was just too big for slamming, both emotionally and form-wise. So I stopped trying so hard and waited until the day-of. I've traditionally had luck - and it is very much luck - by waiting until the last minute. My senses get real acute and my imagination fires up in all sorts of odd directions. It's like a switch flipping in my head, and boom, we're off.
I wrote a piece that came out of a conversation I had over lunch about the question, "What kind of poetry do you write?", which is a ridiculous, horrible question to ask a poet. I'm writing a column about that question alone, so I won't go into it deeply here, save to say that it was a poem that came tumbling out of me once I settled on the point. "To the Question, 'What Kind of Poetry Do You Write?'" was fun to write, and fun to perform. I had no idea what it would score in the slam and didn't care (again, typical). I would never have bet that it would have scored a 30.
In the second round I read a poem I wrote while writing the first, entitled "Denny's Diner and Colosseum." I've been trying to write a poem about the odd dynamic of watching YouTube videos of fights that unfold in Denny's restaurants (like, watching then for hours). Look it up. It's a thing. Anyhow, the poems I tried before kind of aborted, so I let them go. Yesterday? The tone clicked, no doubt helped by the fact that I had the first poem kneeling beside me at the table, maw cracked wide, taking any and all scraps that this poem could not contain and turning them into comedy. "Denny's" still scored very well, but I dropped from first place to third. Not surprised. That poem has an edit coming. Anyhow, I'm in the running with a point and eyeing the rest of the season to play.
It felt great to get up there in that capacity again. Slam has always given me more than I've ever expected as both a writer and a performer, and last night was no different. You'd think after so many years of doing it that would get stale. It doesn't. POETS get stale.
It's hard to say that without sounding like a braggart. Believe me, I am not bragging. I tried to write something of merit days before and it just wasn't clicking. And while words were coming out, they just didn't resonate with me, or in one spectacular blaze of failure, the experiment was just too big for slamming, both emotionally and form-wise. So I stopped trying so hard and waited until the day-of. I've traditionally had luck - and it is very much luck - by waiting until the last minute. My senses get real acute and my imagination fires up in all sorts of odd directions. It's like a switch flipping in my head, and boom, we're off.
I wrote a piece that came out of a conversation I had over lunch about the question, "What kind of poetry do you write?", which is a ridiculous, horrible question to ask a poet. I'm writing a column about that question alone, so I won't go into it deeply here, save to say that it was a poem that came tumbling out of me once I settled on the point. "To the Question, 'What Kind of Poetry Do You Write?'" was fun to write, and fun to perform. I had no idea what it would score in the slam and didn't care (again, typical). I would never have bet that it would have scored a 30.
In the second round I read a poem I wrote while writing the first, entitled "Denny's Diner and Colosseum." I've been trying to write a poem about the odd dynamic of watching YouTube videos of fights that unfold in Denny's restaurants (like, watching then for hours). Look it up. It's a thing. Anyhow, the poems I tried before kind of aborted, so I let them go. Yesterday? The tone clicked, no doubt helped by the fact that I had the first poem kneeling beside me at the table, maw cracked wide, taking any and all scraps that this poem could not contain and turning them into comedy. "Denny's" still scored very well, but I dropped from first place to third. Not surprised. That poem has an edit coming. Anyhow, I'm in the running with a point and eyeing the rest of the season to play.
It felt great to get up there in that capacity again. Slam has always given me more than I've ever expected as both a writer and a performer, and last night was no different. You'd think after so many years of doing it that would get stale. It doesn't. POETS get stale.