By Jennifer Lew
Local poets are turning words into sport. They’re rhyming, rapping and singing new life into poetry and warming up for an event called a slam.
Though it’s been popular in the U.S. since the 1980s, Ottawa seems to be discovering slam poetry, or performance poetry, only now. Other Canadian cities such as Montreal and Vancouver are familiar with it, but there haven’t been regularly scheduled events in the capital.
Local poets Pierre Ringwald and Kris Northey decided to introduce slam poetry at a show in September and at another last month at the Aloha Room on Bank Street.
“We wanted a poetry night with a more dynamic atmosphere and to warm Ottawa up to the idea of a slam,” says Ringwald.
Slams are different from traditional poetry readings because they’re competitive. Ottawa’s first slam is planned for January.
Slams consist of three-minute performances by poets who are judged by people in the audience. The winner advances to a national competition where a Slam Champ is declared.
Though the last two shows weren’t competitive, slam poetry seems to be a hit. Last month’s show sold out within an hour.
“I thought some of it was phenomenal. It was very well presented,” said Marilyn Hobbs, who had never seen performance poetry before.
Lisa Whight, a student, agreed. The show was “pretty powerful and really penetrated the soul.”
One of the most vibrant poets, Oni the Haitian Sensation, also known as Oni Joseph, defined slam poetry for the crowd with an energetic and eclectic performance. She sang a cappella and mixed the tone, rhythm, volume and pace of spoken words for effect. With hands and hips swinging, Joseph sang out with lines like: “You love to have sex, you love to have sex. I love to have sex . . . ” in a poem about birth control.
The style and themes of slam poetry are diverse. While Joseph performed poems about black Madonnas, sex and African-American history, Northey performed a political poem about how the “elections humiliate us this fall,” a commentary on the presidential election fiasco in the U.S. and Canada’s own campaign circus. She then changed the mood of her performance with a soothing voice reminiscent of a jazz singer.
But slam poetry isn’t just about performance. It brings personal, introspective poetry to the public.
Slam poetry “has to be performance-oriented and it has to be understood on first reading, unlike written poetry, in which you can read it over and over again,” explains Northey.
“Slam poetry combines the power of words with the power of performance,” says Ringwald. But it must also “engage the audience.”
One way to engage is with interactive poetry. Ringwald showed that the audience could be as important as the poet. He asked the audience, who enthusiastically obliged, to yell “Who?” whenever he asked “What’s his name?!” in a poem about brand names.
This kind of casual and light-hearted atmosphere is reflective of the genre. During a moment of nervousness, Ringwald forgot a line, and someone from the audience hollered, “It’s all good, Pierre’s the man,” in support.
A true entertainer, Anthony Baldwin Lewis had the crowd in hysterics with a bitter break-up poem. Lewis emphasized and paused at just the right moments for the crowd to catch the double entendre and even the name of his ex-girlfriend, “who works at the Bank of Montreal.”
As a member of Poetic Soul Spot, an Ottawa group, Lewis has organized other spoken-word events and brought American slammers to the capital.
Besides a slam in January, Northey hopes to bring poets from Montreal to Ottawa next summer and hopes that by 2002, the capital will be ready to host veterans from across the country at its first national slam competition.