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Unread 02-25-2002, 08:04 PM
JohnBoddie JohnBoddie is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Landenberg, PA, USA
Posts: 199
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HB - Without further ado, I offer you:

JB's Sure-Fire Guaranteed Method for Placing Well in Poetry Slams

Think about figure skating.

As with figure skating, success in poetry slams is a combination of technical merit, presentation and the bias of the judges.

Bias of the judges. You can help yourself by looking for the loosest slam you can find, preferably one where the audience picks the winners and there's only an MC.

Technical merit. This is worth about twenty percent of your score. A few things to keep in mind:

You need a solid signature line that you can come back to. A good example is something like "The revolution will not be televised!" (the line comes from Gil Scott-Heron).

Structure your stanzas so that you come back and hit your signature line at least once per stanza.

Keep your stanzas down to about ten lines each and see if you can crank out five or six of them.

Avoid complex ideas or structures leading up to a conclusion. The signature line is the piece and all the other lines should support it.

In the body of the stanzas, it's much more important to have sonic continuity than narrative continuity. If it sounds really good, it doesn't have to stand up to detailed analysis.

Multi-syllable words get extra points if you can make them stand out. Don't use foreign words unless they're reasonably well known and avoid long words with obvious Latin roots.

Presentation: This is eighty percent of the score. Nothing succeeds like energy at this point.

Slow down your delivery. Make each line into a javelin you throw at the audience.

Make your body language project to the audience. This is not the time to slump back and be cool. Even if you are doing a piece on seduction, reach out to pull your audience in. Move around, wave your arms, play air guitar.

Avoid topics like depression, militarism or any of the normal teen angst stuff. Find something that's out of the mainstream. "Without the Toyotathon, civilization will die!" "Where do they put the toilet in a Stealth bomber" "Britney gave me a reason to live"

Memorize, don't read. Practice with a tape recorder (or a videocam). Time yourself.

Have an extra poem in reserve.


That's about it. Go have some fun.

JB
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