(Photo credit: Emily Muir)
There may be as many definitions of and terms for spoken-word poetry as there are spoken-word poets. Ask any poet, fan – or detractor – of the broad sub-genre and the answer will vary wildly.
In the broadest terms, spoken-word poetry is a poetic form that utilizes some aspect of performance in its delivery to the audience. A spoken-word poem may originate on the page but it doesn’t stay there for long, coming to life instead through the poet’s unique mode of performance. The genre’s forms and performance styles draw from such diverse sources as traditional poetry, hip hop, dub poetry, performance poetry and art, theatre, stand-up comedy, oral storytelling and sound poetry. A poetry slam draws together spoken-word artists, who perform for the adulation of the crowd and often a monetary reward. The performance aspect of spoken-word is precisely what draws the most criticism from traditionalists who insist that a true poem should transmit its meanings and nuances strictly through the poem’s language, structure and rhetorical tropes.
Books@Torontoist editor-in-chief James Grainger recently sat down with Dave Silverberg, who, besides being a slam poet himself, is one of the organizers of the Toronto Poetry Slam, an event that draws spoken-word artists from around the GTA and beyond.
Grainger: Tell me about the Toronto Poetry Slam.
Silverberg: It happens once a month, usually the third Saturday if we can arrange that with the folks at the Drake Underground, where the event happens. Admission is five dollars, doors open at 7 p.m. and poets register to compete at 7:30. Winner takes home a hundred bucks. We also have a youth slam, for poets age twelve to nineteen, at the Central.
Grainger: Why do you do a slam especially for young people?
Silverberg: It was something we felt we had to do. So many people were coming out to the Drake that we felt there was room for another event. Also, even though the Drake event is all-ages, the bouncers don’t always get that particular memo delivered to them. We wanted to create an event that young people would have no problem getting into. The younger fans also have their own young poets to identify with and befriend and even collaborate with at times. The youth slam has been the baby of Yehuda Fisher, who hosts the event, while I host the slam at the Drake. We’re both part of the Toronto Poetry Project, a collective of twelve poets that organizes the slam events. We meet once every two months to discuss the direction of the project and we write grant proposals to the Canada Council, an organization that helps us pay for the feature poets that we bring in once a month, the out-of-towners who come in from all over North America.
Grainger: What are the crowds like? Is it a downtown crowd or more of a GTA mix?
Silverberg: It’s a definite mix – lots of people from the downtown core but also from all over the burbs. We also have people coming from Guelph, from Burlington, all over.
Grainger: How is a slam event different from a traditional poetry reading?
Silverberg: Let me count the ways! I think it comes down to energy really. The energy from the audience feeds the energy of the poets. I encourage the audience before the night begins to voice their likes and even to boo and hiss at things they find racist or anti-feminist or distasteful. So it’s not like you can get away with being a prick on stage. There have been instances where we’ve had a lot of hissing. One night a poet dropped the N Bomb and was booed off stage to the accompaniment of “Na na na, hey hey hey, good bye….” So because the audience is encouraged to not sit on their hands and to voice their pleasure or displeasure at the poems, it makes the event more of a concert. A slam is also a competition, which draws out bigger crowds in general. Combine all this with generally strong writing and material and it becomes a recipe for a different kind of night out. We get people coming out for first dates, we’ve had an 85-year-old couple celebrating their anniversary and we’ve had people like Chantal Kreviazuk and Raine Maida.
Grainger: Do you find that a lot of traditionalists still look down at spoken-word?
Silverberg: There’s still a bit of that. We got into a bit of war of words on the blogosphere when poet Paul Vermeersch said some pretty inflammatory and I would say stereotypical things about the form on his blog. (There’s a good commentary on Paul’s anti-spoken-word screed on poet Zach Wells’ blog – ed) This attracted a lot of attention from our community. We still don’t know where this sudden hatred came from. Maybe it’s because spoke-word poets have started showing up on the roster of more traditional poetry events like the Atrbar Poetry Series. The bookers of those events have started including more spoken-word content in their programs and even hosting slam events. Some people don’t like that, but other people from the literary community have come out and been surprised by the quality of the work and said to themselves, “Hey, it’s not all blustery, self-aggrandizing fake hip hop!” I’ve seen some really quality literary work come to life on our stage and it’s often done by unknown 19-year-old kids working at HMV or 21-year-old civil servants. I didn’t even know about them before that night. They just showed up at signed up and did their stuff.
Grainger: How do you publish spoken-word?
Silverberg: It’s funny you mention that because I’m the editor of the country’s old spoken-word anthology, MIC Check. It was a risk, for sure. I solicited work from poets across Canada and had them submit two poems each. It was very well received.
Grainger: Were some of the poems you received not particularly suited to the page?
Silverberg: A few. There were some sound poems that didn’t work without the performance aspect, poems that had sung choruses and refrains that worked best on stage. I chose poems that had a certain rhythm and cadence that worked both on the stage and the page and I tried to include as diverse a range of themes and topics as possible.
Grainger: Where else can you see a slam event in Ontario?
Silverberg: Ontario is gonzo for slams. There’s events in London, Burlington, Peterborough, Mississauga and here in Toronto we also have Dwayne Morgan’s Up From the Roots series and the hundred-dollar Slam in at The Rearview Mirror in Kensington Market. So come on out!
I’m in the middle of changing a few things on my blog. It will be up again in a few days.