First Friday Slam Poetry competition a big hit at Mill Valley Library

First Friday Slam Poetry competition a big hit at Mill Valley Library

By Paul Liberatore
Marin Independent Journal

Posted:   03/03/2012 02:47:23 PM PST


Jubilation for slam poetry winner Daron Austin at the First Friday Slam Poetry Competition at the Mill Valley Library in Mill Valley, Calif. on Friday, March 2, 2012. (Special to the IJ/James Cacciatore) James Cacciatore
The normally sedate Mill Valley Public Library was rocked by a surprisingly large, loud, foot-stomping crowd that cheered the contestants and jeered the judges Friday night at the library's inaugural First Friday Slam Poetry Competition.

Fourteen students from Tamalpais and Redwood high schools performed original poetry for 150 or more adults and teens who jammed into the library's main reading room and quickly got into the egalitarian spirit of the poetry slam, to break down barriers between poets, judges and audience.

"Events at the Mill Valley Public Library are not normally what you would describe as rowdy," said Katie MacBride, the library's 27-year-old young adult librarian and organizer of the competition.

"But I hope people get rowdy because that is what slam poetry is all about."
Emcee Kat Sanford, a veteran slam poetry coach, encouraged those in the crowd to boo if they disagreed with the scoring, to hoot and holler and applaud if they like what the poets are saying and to generally become part of the action. Members of the audience, most of them attending a poetry slam for the first time, weren't shy about following that instruction.

The contestants — Tam High's Mayana Bonaparte, Emmanuel Klev Xavier Blanchard-Kabat, Ania Boryslawska, Billy Butler, Connie Chong, Will Daly, Chase Hansen, Chelsey Meyer, Casey O'Brien, Tyler Parkerson, Meg Weisselberg, Hannah Yerington, Daron Austin and Redwood's Rayna Saron — shouted,

Advertisement

sang, whistled and whispered their way through poems about the media sexualization of young women, puppy love, a sister's attempted suicide, a grandmother's fatal cancer, a freshman's fear of high school and various strains of adolescent insecurity, anger and angst.
"When you hear their words, you're right in their head, you remember what it was like when you were their age, if you've forgotten, and you can imagine what they're going through," said artist Katie Kuhn, the mother of two teenagers, neither of them in the competition. "As a parent, it takes you to where they are. You hear them."

After each poet performed, the evening's three judges — Albert Flynn DeSilver, Marin County's first poet laureate; poetry teacher Terri Glass and science fiction writer Ayize Jama-Everett — held up cards with the individual scores, between one and ten, like figure skating judges in the Olympics.

A relatively recent literary phenomenon, the first poetry slam was held in Chicago in 1984. San Francisco's Fort Mason hosted the first National Poetry Slam in 1990. Last year, the Tam District staged its first poetry slam, a lively format that seems to be gaining momentum in Marin high schools.

Seventeen-year-old


Slam poetry winner Daron Austin, a senior at Tamalpais High School, delivers the winning poem at the First Friday Slam Poetry Competition at the Mill Valley Library in Mill Valley, Calif. on Friday, March 2, 2012. (Special to the IJ/James Cacciatore) James Cacciatore
Billy Butler, who recently founded a slam poetry club at Tam High, had the crowd laughing and whooping when he recited the lines, "Poet is a nicer word for nerd," and, "I'm awkward, like a missed fist pump."
"I found slam poetry though YouTube videos and it intrigued me," he said. "It wasn't boring like I thought most poetry was. It put a new spin on the medium of poetry."

After all the contestants competed in the first round, 18-year-old Chase Hansen and 17-year-old Daron Austin emerged as the point leaders and competed in the final. Austin, whose poems celebrated hip-hop culture and rap music, took home the first-place prize of a Kindle Fire e-tablet. Hansen, who had been docked for going over the three-minute time limit, won a $30 iTunes gift card.

"This is my first time," the winner said, surrounded by friends and well-wishers. "My main thing was just having fun, seeing the other contestants and getting something from them."

Hansen, a crowd favorite, was also competing for the first time.

"It's a great thing to do," he said. "I'd like to see poetry slams everywhere — on top of buildings, underground, everywhere."

Judge Terri Glass, a former program director of California Poets in the Schools, was pleasantly surprised by the high level of competition.

"I was impressed by the content of the poems and the delivery, how melodramatic some of them were," she said with a giggle. "I wasn't expecting it to be as amped up as it was. Slam poetry has been around for a long time, but I'm glad they're doing it at the high school level now because it gets kids enthusiastic about poetry."

When it was all over and the still buzzing crowd was drifting out the doors, MacBride, the young adult librarian, said the evening had not only blazed a trail for poetry, but had also brought teens and adults together in a rare shared experience.

"It's nice for the community to see who these kids are and what they can do, to cheer for them and learn about them," she said. "I think these kids are incredibly talented and awesome and brave, and I'd like members of the community to see them as I see them, not like intensely overworked kids or pot smoking delinquents, but as really creative, interesting kids who have something to say. And from the kids' perspective, they can see that all these people are coming to hear what they have to say. It's a nice symbiotic relationship."

Contact Paul Liberatore via email at liberatore@marinij.com