AP Slam 2008 - August 2nd

August 2nd, 2008 - A heated night of fun, excitement, and poetry for all! SLAM NIGHT was simply awesome, and here's a record of everything that happened on that night.

Have you heard of the Allpoetry Slam? In case you haven't, the AP Slam is a wild type of competition that tests poetic skill to the extreme; slammers must write poetry fast in response to an open prompt, under pressure and with a short time limit. The contest was planned and hosted by Duana... and here, I must pause and say that Duana had done it all. There were The first slam night took place on August 2nd, 2008. There are 15 stages to the slam, and by the end of august 2nd, they had gotten to stage 7. The slam will be finished next saturday, same time!

The contest page is at http://allpoetry.com/contest/2415814 . There you can read all of the entries in the slam, and see it all.

~~~Preparing for the Slam~~~
Before the slam there was a flurry of preparation。 Duana had started it all by posting in all the groups she was in and creating a sign-up page for the slam, a contest. She also created a group called All Poetry Slam 2008. You can find these at the following links:
Sign-up contest: http://allpoetry.com/contest/2410673
Slam Group: http://allpoetry.com/group/show/All%20Poetry%20Slam%20%202008

Many of the slammers heard of the slam through contest listings, from Duana's messages posted in every group, or simply from Duana herself.

To sign up for the slam, slammers had to write a ginga, explaining why they should win. A ginga is a short and snappy poem, and it's okay to be extremely self-centered and narcisistic when writing one. Here are some examples of gingas that were written (for more see the contest page):
PassionsPromise:
Come on, show me
what you’ve got in store
and on this stage I’ll
settle the score
Passion has wit
and so much more
so stand real close
to the “EXIT” door.

char13:
Whatever I do,
I do it well,
like hell.

left forever:
You call out saying Fowl! Fowl,
And Judges cut that pretty crown.

Also, all of the slammers, audience members, and judges were required to join the AP Slam group, so that Duana could contact them easily using group messages and forums.
During this time, everyone involved was doing their best to advertise the slam so that more people could know of its existence. They did this in many ways: Duana posted messages in every group she was in as a start, and everyone began telling their friends. Myra9 created some catchy slogans for the slam:

AP Slam....
Get ready to BREAK YOUR HAND!!!!!

And each of the slammers was told to put their ginga on their page. With all of this, word spread fast. Soon, Duana came up with more daring ideas: Adding poems to shameless and posting links in the poem, and having slammers add their slammer number to the end of their username. Not everyone did this, but they were ideas.

~~~Judging~~~
As with all contests, the judging had to be fair, unbiased, and accurate. The judges had many requirements: they had to judge the poem, not the poet, while remembering that the poem was written in less than 3 minutes, and also judge every single poem of every round, which ment they had to stay for the whole slam. The judges read every poem and judged using decimals from a scale of 1 to 10:

8-10: standing ovation on the SLAM challenge in this round
6-7 meets all requirements of the SLAM challenge in this round
4-5 meet some of the requirements
1-4 boo hiss off the stage!!!

There were 5 judges self-elected from the audience on the night of the slam, as well as a few backup judges in case they failed to judge. Why self-elected audience members? As Duana said, "The key to getting good judges is to invite as many people to the slam as possible and see who shows up." Also, all audience members were welcome to judge if they liked. Duana then averaged the scores.

The judges worked well, but as Duana said, "5 audience members elected themselves as judges, and they were good judges- just excellent. However in the slams I do (untypical of most slams), I like to offset the judging scores with the audience's scores. I ask the audience to please send in their scores and then I add them up for each poem, find their average- and the collective audience has one score for each slammer - and thus acting as the 6th judge. This worked beautifully in 2004. But for this slam it didn't work out, because the audience was very sporadic on scoring- so I really just couldn't count them at all or it wouldn't have been fair."

Some of the judges dropped out mid-slam, and others filled in. Many audience members came around to judge too. This could have resulted in calamity, but Duana averaged each poems scores to find the winners.

At the end of that night, Duana averaged everybody's total scores and eliminated everybody below that slam average, to find out who the finalists were... the slammers who went to to the second half, August 9th.

~~~Stage Summaries~~~

The first stage was titled "IS ANYBODY THERE?", and the prompt given to the slammers was: "The point of this round will be to pay attention to voice. What subject is personal to you, what is your passion, what is your style? Every poet has his or her own unique voice. Let us hear yours."

Slammers took this in all directions as they had just 3 minutes to express their poetic voice. SoulfulBubbles expressed emotion beautifully with her words ("The delicate empty shatters/ as i can no longer hear you walk away"). Char13 took the title of the stage as a prompt and wrote a thought-provoking poem that began, "Hey there,/ anyone home?". Amazira wrote a poem stunning though only four lines, that began "My voice is lion, so hear me roar...".

In the end, however, it was Passionspromise's poem that won the stage, as her words wowed her readers with their tone, rhyme, and voice:

"...rhyme is my joy
and I can really do it well
yet also I love my free verse,
but my sonnets are hot as hell."
(read full poem at : http://allpoetry.com/poem/4481601 )

Stage 2 was titled "POETRY INFLUENCE" and the prompt was "Every poet is inspired by another poet... Who is yours? Let them inspire you to write in three minutes. Tell us who your influence is."

Again, we found the slammers writing their poems with just 3 minutes to use, but the results, in spite of that, were incredible. It was interesting seeing who everybody chose... with only three minutes to write, no one had time to ponder which poet to choose. Crimsondew chose Robert Frost and dazzled readers with her vivid imagery and soft, speaking tones. Florida Sunshine mimicked the abstract style of Emily Dickinson. SoulfulBubbles wrote to Edgar Allen Poe with her lines, "Allen you've cried /the sweet never more/ in tintinnabulation you flowered the bells within...". Passionspromise, instead of choosing a single famous poet, chose to say instead: "Im influenced by many/ that are here tonight".

Please note that round 2 was judged a little differently. Here's Duana's note about it: "FOR THIS ROUND WE HAD TO SCORE A LITTLE DIFFERENTLY AS EVERYONE WAS TYING WHEN I THREW THE HIGHEST AND LOWEST SCORES OUT. SO I AVERAGED THE SCORES, FILLED IN THE GAPS OF THOSE WITH MISSING SCORES WITH THE AVERAGES. AMAZIRA CAME OUT ON TOP."

Round 2 was probably extremely hard to judge, especially with all these excellent poems... but the winner was Amazira, with her poem written about Byron Shelley. Here's an excerpt:

"A poet that wrote of starry nights
and dewy morn of wondrous days
in love he could write of many sights
and path of nature's spendid ways..."
(full poem: http://allpoetry.com/poem/4481669 )

"ARTISTIC SHAKEUP: The ha-ha moment in haiku" was the title of stage 3, and the prompt was "Must be strictly traditional 5 7 5 syllable count, with a hilarious moment rather than a traditional aha moment." The slammers had a lot of fun with this one too, as they tried to weave humor into 17 syllables. Each wrote a seemingly traditional haiku that surprised the reader with a funny last line... a punch line. The winner was Florida Sunshine, with a unique and hilarious poem:

"Colors of my Paint
depicts life full of beauty
it's fumes make me faint"
(http://allpoetry.com/poem/4481701 )

Said Florida Sunshine later, "I liked the Haiku round the best. I've written many of these, and have explored all the different avenues you can do with a Haiku. When I saw the stage was a Haiku, I knew this round was in my 'play yard' and I would do well with it."

Stage four was called "FIRST THOUGHT BEST THOUGHT", and it challenged slammers to write at their complete best on the subject of love, without being cliche. Bursts of creativity appeared as the slammers tried not to be cliche on what was probably the most cliched subject ever (except maybe emo cutters). Crimsondew wrote of a "Chest of feelings/ unpadlocked gently" by love.

In the end, the winner was passionspromise, with a poem beautiful in its rhyme and imagery.

"first thought last thought
love is a rare gift
like a fish being caught
your heart starts to drift
in and out ..."
full poem: http://allpoetry.com/poem/4481745 )

Stage 5: Straight up Form Poetry: Shaken not Stirred - Here, slammers had 3 minutes to find and post their best form prewrite. The result: a ton of poems perfect in their forms, and filled with imagery, vivid language, and truth. Iambic pentameter, rictameter, sonnet, ode, free verse, acrostic, and even a lanturn swirl (crimsondew's) appeared.

This round resulted ina tie between Passionspromise and Florida Sunshine, with their two fantastic prewrites. Florida Sunshine wrote a rictameter on christianity, and passion wrote a beautiful sonnet about poetry lasting forever.
Florida Sunshine: http://allpoetry.com/poem/3213910
PassionsPromise: http://allpoetry.com/poem/4472015

Stage Six: HIP HOP! Shaken and stirred... "Give us your best free write. Make it dance. Make it you." Slammers wrote their best free writes (not necessarily free verse), and again there was difficulty for the judges. There were two winners, tying with a score of 8.5, maralisa and amazira.

"...Oh shining star you give us pleasure.
You shine so bright you little treasure. "
(- maralisa http://allpoetry.com/poem/4481799 )

"This clown does his flip flop
in shoes just made for hip hop..."
(- amazira http://allpoetry.com/poem/4481787 )

STAGE 7 COUNTING SYLLABLES - "The original inhabitants of Egypt actually documented the esoteric meaning of each sound vibration. Sound vibration has an effect and every sound is connected with every word we speak and every syllable is connected to it’s eternal meaning, it’s eternal reverberation. All consonants commune with temporal reality and vowel sounds connect with eternal reality and was too sacred to describe. Language is rooted in passion. Reconnect to the passion in language. Bring the unnamable into reality. Articulate the unspoken."

Stage seven was the last stage that they got to, before the night ended. The winner was amazira, with his poem raveling sound and syllables around a snake...

"...Serpents speak
of the sinister..."
(full poem: http://allpoetry.com/poem/4481825 )

In an interview later, Amazira states stage 7 as his favorite, with the phrase, "I do serpentspeak all the time".

---

Thus the night ended, at 11:00. The slam had lasted for 4 hours, 2 hours longer than expected... but they were four hours of pressure, poetry, and fun! Duana finalized the judging and came up with four finalists, who were amazira, florida sunshine, Passionpromise, and char13. (Details on the contest page) Congratulations to them, and also to all of the slammers who competed that night!

In closing, I'd like to quote Duana:

"everyone- i am not exaggerating when I tell you that I am in tears.

this slam went beyond what i could have ever dreamed in a million years..."