Poetry Slam and Rant

Yesterday afternoon I attended my first ever poetry slam.  I've been wondering about slam poetry for a few years now, but between one thing and another I'd never actually been to a slam until yesterday.  I had heard that they were loud and full of hecklers, but that was in America. Here in Galway, poetry audiences are quiet and respectful, even at slams.  

The slam took place at the Roisin Dubh, a pub which people frequently use as a landmark when giving directions in Galway.  I'd never been in there before, and found it much like any other bar, except very crowded for 3:00 in the afternoon.  

About a dozen poets participated in the slam. First up was a young woman in a short, hot pink dress who did a piece about long-post-Woodstock wannabe psychedelia. I thought it was pretty good, but I couldn't follow the narrative thread of it at times, and her performance was a bit too nervous.  She was the best of the first few in my mind.  The next one I thought was good was a man who gave a lively recital of a poem about TV, and the total self-involvement of television as a medium.  

The smoothest performer of the lot was a youngish (about 30, give or take a decade) man from Dublin, who sauntered onto stage with his pint of Guinness.  He gave an excellent reading of a well-crafted poem, but I couldn't help but feel that he was playing to a stereotype of drunken Irish performance traditions.  I wasn't surprised that he won, but the second and third place winners weren't ones I would have guessed.  One of those (I can't remember which) went to a thirteen-year-old boy who did a poem about Hitler, and what if he'd gone to art school instead of becoming a dictator.  He did a great job, for a kid his age, but I felt that a lot of the other poets were better. The other runner-up place went to a woman who recited a poem about being a girl in a convent school in the 1980s, and the famous death of a teenaged girl and her newborn baby in a grotto on church grounds.  She probably did a pretty good job with it, after all, she was one of the winners of the slam, but I had just heard a different take on the exact same story at the Over The Edge showcase on Thursday.  Apparently it's a perennial favorite in Irish literary circles. 

This all brought up one of my pet peeves about writers' groups, which I can now extend to poetry readings.  I hate it when you go around the room and 2/3 of the writers there are working in exactly the same genre, with exactly the same setting. On Martha's Vineyard, it was always a dimly autobiographical piece set on a small island in New England.  Here in Galway, it's usually about someone's grandmother, mean nuns, or the hardships of life as a potato farmer/fisherman/etc.  I mean, I enjoy some of these Irish Identity poems and stories, but I get to the saturation point pretty quickly, and it annoys me when writers (and other artists) are rewarded for playing to a stereotype.  

The slam included several less remarkable Irish Identity pieces including a few bits of shouting about the recession and corrupt politicians, but there were a few who broke the mold.  I especially enjoyed a satirical piece about a woman and her therapist.  It was hilarious, smoothly delivered without extraneous arm-flapping, and not about Ireland. No one here has therapists, or at least they don't talk about their psychiatrists the way Americans like to. I was sorry that she didn't win one of the prizes.  

It was a good afternoon's entertainment. Maybe I'll go to another one some day, or even perform, but aside from the judging, it was just a poetry reading in a crowded bar. 

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