3/13/08

Upcoming slam not your mother’s poetry reading

Evergreen Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Marysville hosts ten of the Northwest’s finest slam poets for the Third Ever Evergreen Invitational Poetry Slam on Saturday, March 15 at 7:30 p.m. The event is a head-to-head competition for hundreds of dollars in prizes and huge bragging rights.

A poetry slam is a competition in which poets perform their own work and are judged by randomly selected audience members holding up Olympic-style score cards. The job of the judges is to resist being influenced by the audience; the job of the audience is to influence the judges.

Among the competitors will be the winner of the individual championship at the National Poetry Slam in Austin last August. Six of the other competitors have represented their cities at Nationals.

Organizer and slam legend Jack McCarthy says, “This is the third year that we’ve done this, and all the reviews have been raves. Last year we packed the house, and the energy in that space could have lighted up the Puget Sound.”

Poets are always competing—for publication, for awards, for academic positions. But in the past, poetic competition has always been very genteel, behind the scenes.

A poetry slam is many things, but genteel is not one of them. Think laughing, crying, whispering, ranting; think in-your-face. A poetry slam can be hugely entertaining, and this promises to be one of the premiere slams of the year.

Evergreen Unitarian Universalist Fellowship is located at 1607 Fourth Street at the corner of Columbia in Marysville. Recommended donation is $10.