Over the weekend, while some of us were getting absolutely nothing done, some NYU students were slamming at the national championship for collegiate slam poets in Los Angeles. And winning.
Essentially, slam poetry is a performance of spoken word poetry at a competitive poetry event— the slam. Poets get on stage, show their stuff, and are judged by members of the audience. Incredibly, the members of NYU’s team, SLAMnyu, just started slamming together last year.
The 12th Annual College Poets Slam Invitational, or CUPSI, was held at the University of La Verne, and slam poets from the across the country to fight it out for several days. Our team, SLAMnyu, emerged victorious, sweating and poet-y and very, very happy. Along with slammers Kate Guenther, Aziza Barnes, Safia Elhillo, Joseph Amodei, Connor Sampson, and coaches Brian Dillon and Steph Holmbo, our very own NYU Local staffer Eric Silver was one of those battling bards, who was kind enough to fight through the jet lag to answer a few of our questions.
