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Uptown Slam

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I recently(ish) returned from an 8 week trip around the world. It was an amazing journey, which I miss now, though there are comforts in being home too of course. It was a journey in search of secrets about my father, family history in Eastern Europe, and the American dream in USA, amongst other things. I wrote a blog whilst on it: http://emmadecent.wordpress.comif you’re interested. However the poetry highlight was Chicago’s Uptown Poetry Slam - ‘where slam began’ in 1987 - organised and still hosted by major performance poet Marc Kelly Smith (or the ‘slampapi’) at the Green Mill Jazz Club, once haunt of Al Capone. (How cool is that?)

 

I did loads of thinking, writing, travelling and growing on my trip, but not much poetry, so it was a tonic to my poet’s soul to find myself, after many thousands of miles, many wonderful, challenging and mind-expanding experiences in an array of unfamiliar places, at the familiar territory of a western urban poetry night. The Green Mill is a lovely intimate club, typically American, with a small stage, booths, tables and a long bar to bare your soul to the bartender over. I felt immediately at home, this place was far more ’my territory’ than any other place I’d been so far, the urban poetry thing I am familiar with, and had not done for many a week by then.

 

I was there with my newly discovered cousin and his wife who live not so far away. One of the motivations behind my trip was a search for my family tree on my Dad’s side, East European Jewish background. When I first began a book advised that before you start doing your family tree you should try to find out if anyone else is the family has done it first. This struck me as a remarkably good idea, but not knowing many of my relatives on my Dad’s side, I had to cast a net, and - there not being many of us Decents - I managed to catch a few relevant ones, one of which was Ross Decent (my 2nd cousin) or really his wife Hilary Decent, also a writer and blogger, though not poet (www.hilarydecent.com). By sheer chance (and my good luck) the couple moved from UK to USA four years ago, and now live in (as Hilary described it) the ‘Desperate Housewife/Stepford Wives’ territory of suburban town Naperville. (For more on that see my blog - or Hilary’s for that matter.) They knew nothing about the family history unfortunately, but Hilary said come and stay if you’re passing this way. How marvellous. As it happened I was passing that way. Before I went on the trip I was picking the brains of lovely US-born poet Fergus Evans, now in Manchester, for good poetry places in the US, and he said, Chicago. Naperville is only 30 miles from Chicago. How even more marvellous.

 

I had a great weekend with Hilary and Ross, wonderful and rare to find relatives you really get on with, and on the Sunday night I managed to persuade them to go to the Uptown Poetry Slam with me - well I had to didn’t I? Though poetry is not normally their thing Hilary and Ross have a wonderfully positive ’don’t say no to anything’ approach to life, which meant they were more than willing to step out of their comfort zone and accompany me to a jazz bar in north Chicago for poetry on my last night with them.

 

Marc Kelly Smith started a poetry night in Chicago in 1985, which moved to the regular Uptown Poetry Slam a the Green Mill in 1987, where it has been running every Sunday night since. Though this night gave birth to the poetry slam competition which we now know worldwide, it is it’s kickstart on the ‘performance’ of performance poetry that it should be better known for. I’ve never been much drawn to slams, hearing they can be aggressive and scary things, but I had to go to this one because if its importance. Perhaps some slams which have gone that way have lost something in translation from the original concept of Uptown’s, as the spirit of this one is very much as Marc’s description on the website (www.slampapi.com) - a ‘mock’ competition.

 

This will be a shock to many on the British poetry scene but they did something totally radical: they started – and ran – pretty much on time. I was shocked, but you know, it seemed to work! 7pm open mic, 8pm 2 guest poets, 9pm slam, fantastic. We had as much poetry as we could eat and were finished by 10pm, not too tired to listen properly anymore or drunk.

 

Marc was an excellent host and is a great and fiery and lyrical poet. He introduced everyone with warmly, and with wry, intelligent humour. And he swore! What a relief, I don’t think I’d heard anyone swear since I landed in the USA, everyone is so nice! Thank ** for that! There was quite a mixed bunch, both crowd and poets – mostly young, but older too, and a good mix of women and men. That night there were quite a few ‘angry-at-mother’ poems which were weighing the crowd down a little, and drawing Marc’s notice: ’Don’t do the one about your mother!’ he pleaded with the slammers. But it was all in good humour, and as Hilary said it was ‘real’.

 

I signed up for the open mic, and tentatively for the slam (see how scary the vibe was). I did my poem ’American Dream’ to start with, well I had to, being finally here in the USA. The poem expresses some of my fascinations and contradictions about the USA, why I was on the trip there at all really. It seemed to go down well, so cheered on by this and the friendly-non-aggressive vibe, I decided to go for the slam. I asked for tips on how to approach this from the excellent guest poets Cole Inky Sarar and [--], and they confirmed my instinct, which is to do what you think is your strongest poem first (as if you don’t get through the first round you certainly can’t win). Marc picked 3 random people from the front row of the audience to be judges who gave marks out of 10. Each poet is knocked out as they beat or are beaten by the next one. It was indeed a friendly and lighthearted slam, but not without critique by audience and Marc. In the end it was only one round, and I decided to do my only sex poem ‘Naked’, which I am aware is a bit shameless in a competitive situation, but hey, it was a competition! And I won! There were 6 of us, all men except me. I got a good response, won $11.24 that Marc found in his pocket, and Hilary and Ross gave me a standing ovation!

Needless to say I was well-chuffed. I’ve never won a slam before and as ever practical fellow-writer Hilary Decent said ’you can put that on your cv!’ I was frustrated later when I couldn’t find another poetry night to go to that timed in well for the rest of my time in the USA, but as my friend in Ohio said, ‘If you have to end your poetry trip in the USA on winning a Chicago poetry slam, that’s not too bad!’ All good stuff.

 

Emma’s blog: http://emmadecent.wordpress.com

Hilary Decent’s website with links to her blog: www.hilarydecent.com

Uptown Poetry Slam and Marc Kelly Smith’s website: www.slampapi.com

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