Capital Poetry Slam – 2011 Semi-finals
10 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in poetryslam
This is what happens when a post is written just before the Finals instead of right after the Capital Slam Semi-Finals. That is you get my so bad they sort of turned into art pictures along with some words expressing what I can still remember and/or decipher from my notes (from the first half of the show on my cell phone, before it died and I had to wing it).
But enough of that, let’s talk poetry. First up in the competition for the night was Mack Cannon. He opened with a a-z form poem, where he strings together words of the same letter, building toward a complete whole. He closed the night (due to the reverse order of poets standard to the slams) with a different form poem, wherein he used the repetition of ‘I am’ fill-in-the-blank to create a powerful poem of/about being a young black man. I quite agreed when he was chosen to move on to the finals.
Next Prufrock gave a funny poem “Big Ego”. (Note all titles are made up by me as aids keep the poems straight. Usually I took a major theme or striking excerpt as the title.) “Big Ego” spoke of what an ego he had to have to think he was something in this vast world/universe that we’re in. For his final poem “Black Man,” he gave a stirring account what he is and what stereotypes he is not. While my description/memory may not be indepth, I very much enjoyed Prufrock and was happy to see him advance to the next round. Elle P recounted us with here two poems “Revolution” and “My People” that impressed the judges enough to advance.
One of my new (to me) poets that became a favorite of mine this year, Vanessa Baker performed two poems “Abercrombie and Fitch” and “Yes/No”, that unsurprisingly were favorites of mine. “Abercrombie and Fitch” is told from the point of view of a ‘popular’ person being what people expect of them so they’ll fit in, causing them to lose themselves in the process. “Yes/No” portrayed the push and pull of female protagonist who is interested in dating and a good time, and the men who continually need to push that further in a quest for sex. If there was a judging crime for the night, it would be that Vanessa didn’t advance.
Loh El gave us “Men” a description of what true manhood entails, with the great line, ‘Only psychopaths don’t cry’. His finally was “Welcome to a world.” I believe that Loh El has improved greatly over time and agree with the judges in advancing him to the next round. Grace Defined first gave us a love poem. I’ve lost my note on what her second one was (sorry).
Rusty Priske started with “Took the Path More Traveled”, a lament of the have-I-sold-out grown up who partakes of a normal desk job life and feels like he’s lost touch with his revolutionary poetry hurdling younger self. For his second poem he wrote a suffix poem, “-ation/-ize”, wherein the words almost all ended in first -ation and then -ize. I’m going to call Rusty out, since I like him so, in that he totally deserved to proceed to the next round as he did, but he really makes me sad that I’m missing the finals (due to summer travel commitments), because I feel like he held back on his best stuff for then. So good stuff, but not the grade-A stuff I’m used to from him.
Sean O’Gorman first shared a poem about poetry “Life is Liquid” and then followed that up with “Life is Worth Risking”. Again, specifics that I can recall to share are sketchy, but I will say I throughly enjoyed his stuff. Sean finally got some love from the judges and advanced this year.
Sense-Say is another of the new (or at least new to me) poets that I came to enjoy. First he gave us “The Body” and then the beautiful “Mind is Too Beautiful a Thing to Waste.” The judges agree that he is a deserving new talent and advanced him to the next round.
Brad Morden gave us “Just Human”. The “Bleed a Little” about the importance of living life fully and giving oneself to it. Bruce Narbaitz (another hot new slammer) first gave us “Priceless”. Then followed up with the fantastic “Bridge Jumping”, that I really wish I could recall more of to share with you, but did wonderful things with the old canard of “If all your friends jumped off a bridge.” I was quite pleased he advanced to the next round.
The last competitor, Daniel KL, gave us “Ski Love” a great tale of young love, what I’m more familiar with as “summer vacation love.” That was followed by her second “Broken Heart”. I much enjoyed her poems, but the judges did not, so she didn’t advance.
Kim Bit (another new-to-me this year poet that I was glad to see represented) was a sacrificial poet. Also, Open Secret gave us a non-competition poem to cap the night off. His “When I Am…” was powerful and reminded me enough of how much I like his talent to pick up a chat book of his after the show.
(If you really want to see all my crazy photos, look here.)
