Why Slam Poetry Is Cool, Especially In New York
By David Zumwalt
“Language is a strange animal!” Jive Poetic shouted at the room full of strangers. The crowd was on the edge of their seats. A near-constant stream of snaps, claps, and appreciative groans added a curious element of emotional connectivity to Jive’s performance. He held the Wednesday night audience of the Nuyorican Poets Café rapt at attention.
Slam poetry is the art of competitive performance poetry. The style was invented by a construction worker named Marc Smith in 1984 in Chicago as a way to liven up open mic poetry readings. In the thirty years since its creation, slam poetry has spread to almost every major city in the United States, and it should come as no surprise that New York City, home to historic poetry joints like the Nuyorican, is home to a thriving slam culture.
Jive Poetic, the host of the Nuyorican’s Wednesday Night Slam, lists three main slam venues in NYC. There is the louderARTS slam, Mondays at Bar 13, which Jive describes as “a smaller night, more subdued,” with more focus on the writing than on the performance. There is the Urbana Poetry Slam, Tuesdays at The Sidewalk Café, which Jive describes as “more quirky, off-the-cuff.” And of course there are the Wednesday and Friday night slams at the Nuyorican, the oldest slam poetry venue in New York, a place that Jive heralds as “a show in itself” complete with a featured poet, a DJ, sing-a-longs to hip-hop, and “the most consistent crowd and audience you’re going to find.”
Jive is reluctant to pick a favorite venue, praising each “for its own unique personality,” a stance also held by East Village resident and founder of NYU Slam, Eric Silver. Silver states that louderARTS is “the most poetic” out of the three venues, Urbana is “a tight-knit poetry community” with “lots of regulars,” and the Nuyorican is “a production, a festival of energy.” He is also quick to add that NYU boasts its own, highly successful slam scene. In fact, NYU’s slam poetry team has won the CUPSI National Championship the last two years in a row.
Jive and Silver both point out that although slam is a big deal in New York City, it also has a substantial and dedicated following in many other cities. Zachary Kluckman, host of the MAS Poetry slam at Winning Coffee Co. in Albuquerque, New Mexico, agrees with them. Kluckman cites cities like Denver and Portland as hubs for slam poetry, and asserts that slam is thriving in Albuquerque as well. Kluckman estimates that slam venues in Albuquerque host an average audience of between forty and sixty people per slam, an impressive crowd for the smaller city. However, this kind of turnout is still nothing compared to the eighty to a hundred people that the Nuyorican hosts on a Wednesday, or (if the New York Fire Department is reading this), the exactly one hundred and twenty people that pack into the café for the Friday night slams.
The point of all of this is that slam poetry as an art form that is growing. Fast. There is something both endearing and indescribable about watching a stranger pour their heart out to you on stage. Indeed, Kluckman says that the thing he loves most about slam poetry is that “it demands that the emotional connection [to] the poem be real. You can’t fake it because the audience will know.” This means that, as Eric Silver puts it, slam has become “the poetic tradition of telling strangers all your secrets.”
Slam poetry performances can be painful, funny, angry, and cathartic. If you have never been to a slam, I strongly encourage you to go. In the words of Jive Poetic, “it will totally turn your image of poetry upside down.”
Watch Jive Poetic perform his poem, “Go Home,” here.
