Freedom of expression: Melbourne Girls College students, from left, Sophie Townsend, Stella Bourne and Nicola Braslis write about human rights for their performance poems. Photo: Carla Gottgens, Melbourne Writers Festival
There's hooting and hollering, raucous laughter and occasional tears, yelling and clapping, standing ovations and rowdy audience participation. Could this bethe same form of expression beloved of Plath and Wordsworth? Well, yes, it's poetry - but not as you know it. It's the theatrical world of slam poetry which rips verse off the page of stuffy academic textbooks and plants it firmly in your face.
Young people in particular love it. "Slam gives you more freedom of speech which is great because you can put your words together with more meaning," said 14-year-old Nicola Braslis, a year 8 student from Melbourne Girls' College who will be performing in the Victorian final of the Australian Poetry Slam championship next Friday in a team with fellow students Stella Bourne and Sophie Townsend.
The girls tried their hand at slam poetry after a school workshop by Melbourne slam poet Emilie Zoey Baker and went on to win the inter-schools competition OutLoud! at the recent Melbourne Writers Festival. In their winning poem they penned about human rights, the three performed different lines, sometimes speaking over each other to illustrate the world's failure to listen to young voices.
"I watch slam poetry on Youtube now and I find it very empowering," Nicola said. "Poetry to us before this was mainly just normal structured work and words that you had to put with syllables and stuff like that. This was more free so you can express it much more deeply. I do think we would probably all go and watch slam poetry now whenever it's around."
The competitive performance element of slam poetry evolved in Chicago in 1984 when poet and construction worker Marc Smith created a weekly event at a jazz club. The concept spread across the US and then the world. A spoken word movement was born, which slowly made its way to Australia in the late '90s.
Poets performing in the Australian Poetry Slam championship are limited to two minutes and in keeping with the democratic tradition of the slam movement, five judges are randomly chosen from the audience and deliver their verdicts with score cards. Poems must be original and there are no props, costumes or music allowed.
Miles Merrill, the man who brought slam poetry to Australia and founded the Australian Poetry Slam in Sydney a decade ago, was fittingly born in Chicago like the movement itself. He turned to performing poetry after deciding his voice would never be heard in acting. "I kept auditioning as an actor and the director would say, 'Sorry, but the lead character's not black but we've got you down as janitor one, janitor two or the Indian guy,'" he said. "That's when I realised that anything going on inside of me would never actually be heard or revealed unless I wrote it myself and poetry seemed one of the most immediate forms that helped me bypass the gatekeepers and connected me directly with other human beings."
The energy of the performance aspect differentiates slam events from traditional poetry readings. "At a poetry reading, you occasionally see people just staring at the floor mumbling into the microphone reading from a piece of paper for 20 minutes in a really self-indulgent way," said Merrill. "What this does is put the audience first."
Politics in general and a conservative government in particular always provide good fodder for poetry of protest but Merrill says the best work has more of a poignant personal perspective than simply a political message. "There is lots of imagery, lots of metaphor." He has some advice to poets aspiring to make their slam debut: cut out the unnecessary words, try to paint a picture of action, memorise it so you can look the audience in the eye, steer clear of sticking to a rhythm and try to have a conversation with the audience through your poem.
There's a crossover between the mainstream world of rap and hip-hop to the more marginalised world of poetry but Merrill insists the latter has influenced the former, not the other way around. Lyricists are writers who ultimately want their words to be heard so many dabble in the spoken word environment of slam poetry. "Some people in the hip-hop community actually want their words and concepts to be first and foremost so what they are doing is saying turn off the beats, I am going to speak this. It's also a way of dissociating themselves from what can often be a misogynistic and materialistic series of themes within the hip-hop community."
But slam poetry is not all about free verse. Traditional poetry has also found a place in the slam format. One of the state finalists performing next Friday is Mike Cleeland, a 55-year-old bush poet and former shearer from Phillip Island who lists his inspirations as Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson. He had never participated in a poetry slam before earning a state finals berth at his Wonthaggi heat. "I really had no idea of what to expect and it was definitely not your typical Tuesday afternoon in the library but I was particularly impressed by some of the young people who produced some very good literature and brought all their friends along as well," Cleeland said.
His poem, Sensitive New Age Shearer, explores the changing traditions of Australia's iconic shearing industry. Any event that promotes and publicises poetry and literature can only be a good thing in his view. "I like to play a role in maintaining a tradition in bush poetry and the telling of interesting stories that deserve to be told," he said.
Beaufort artist Elissa Marks, 30, was surprised and delighted to make the state final with her poem about "language wizardry" which explores how words are often used quite flippantly to undermine others. After performing in the Ballarat heat, she is an enthusiastic convert of the slam poetry movement. "The spoken word is such a powerful and raw form of expression and poetry is where it is at," she said. "Sometimes I think being a woman it can be hard to get heard in a group so to use spoken word in a monologue is a great way to validate your emotional experience."
The winner of the national final held at the Sydney Opera House will receive an $11,000 trip to China's Bookworm International Literary Festival and the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali but Marks isn't in it for the glory. "Ballarat is not really the spoken word capital of Australia so I don't have high hopes but I'm excited to be part of it and get my emotions heard and be inspired by others," she said.
The Victorian state final of the 2014 Australian Poetry Slam will be held at the State Library of Victoria, 328 Swanston Street, on Friday, September 12 from 7pm-9.30pm. Online bookings: slv.vic.gov.au/event/poetry-slam or 8664 7099. Admission is free.
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