Last night, I watched the grand slam of what used to be one of my favorite slam venues in the United States thanks to the power of the Internet and I have to say I wasn’t impressed at all. Often, I found myself applauding the judges for giving low scores because the poems actually deserved them. I almost got into a Twitter flame war with another poet because I felt the content overall was underwhelming and didn’t move me. I would expect a younger venue or a venue from a different city to fall back on tried and true slam topics (meta, political, sexual/physical identity) delivered in that “no shit, this is bad” way that I’ve seen countless amounts of times but not this one. With the exception of hearing two love poems that used entomology in one and Psylocke in the other (both by one poet), everything else was just there. I saw a slam, there were scores, four people were picked to be on a slam team.
Ryan Rivas got the videos up really quick from There Will Be Words #1 and they look great. You should watch them here. Also, we are taking submissions for the September 13 show, which you can read more about here.
I have three pieces of flash fiction in this month’s issue of Connotation Press, along with a video of me reading one of them and an interview. Thanks to Meg Tuite for putting this awesomeness together. You can check out my contribution here. After, go read the rest of the fiction.
This Friday, I’ll be at the Outdoor stage of Orlando’s Fringe Festival for Emotions Dance Company’s Excerpts Show. Read more about it here.
Random question, but who was the poet who read/created the Psylocke love poem? I think I may have heard it at a recent slam and I’m now in love with it. Thanks!
I don’t know who it was, honestly. It was a year or so ago.