worn-whorehouse-stairs:

shes-a-voodoo-child:

copperbadge:

quasarkisses:

spice-ghouls:

quasarkisses:

yall can make fun of slam poems all you want but I’ve never felt more powerful than listening to women yell about their trauma to strangers

a lot of the difference between people who like slam poetry and people who hate slam poetry is comprised of whether you’ve heard slam poetry used constructively as a platform for the voices of the oppressed and those who would otherwise not have ways to express their emotions, or, alternatively, just heard it used by boring untalented white dudes who want a license to complain about how Smartphones Are Literally The Devil

^An excellent fucking take right here

Chicago recently had a big-ass scandal in the Slam Poetry community over the (predictably, white, middle-aged) guy who basically ran the Slam in Chicago for decades, delivering a poem complaining about how often people were using slam poetry to talk about their trauma. Thus validating @spice-ghouls‘ excellent point. 

It went down like a lead balloon but it led to some pretty great poetry about poetry from those objecting. 

I feel @worn-whorehouse-stairs might have a lot of things to say on this topic.

That happened at the college age national and it was beautiful because it was kids just being like NOPE. At the regular nationals there was also a lot to do with many people of marginalized identities, mainly women of color, who work those events not getting paid for their time and effort over the last several years and then that poem acted as a catalyst for those people and their supporters to basically say screw that. Because said entitled white poets wouldn’t HAVE a platform without other people devoting time and money so we can all share our experiences. And the difficulty is a mediocre slam poem by a white cis dude ABOUT an issue is going to reach infinitely more people than a poem by someone of that same lived experience talking about their lives. Like if any more of my non poet friends link me to Neil Hilborn’s “OCD” like HaVE U sEEn THiSSS I’m going to lose my whole mind.

There is a weird undercurrent young, newer slammers feeling like they have to retraumatize themselves because trauma scores well. They also don’t always know that writing about the trauma isn’t the same as dealing with it. But if you take it like a game and aren’t afraid to write about anything want to and are ready to speak about, it can be a stepping stone.

I love slam because you can learn a tremendous amount about different types of people and the art is transformative. But like anything else there’s cliques and politics and too many people who get involved think it’s the only way to have value as a poet. You have to really hold to your beliefs about your own art not to get caught up in how socially capitalist it can be.