Poetry Slam Essay

On my visit to Bar13 I was instructed to watch a poetry slam. I have never experience such a vivid art of performing poetry. The only way I had experienced poetry before was by reading it from books. This has change the way I see poetry now. The poetry slam is a very competitive event in which the poets perform their work. The poets are judged by people of the audience. The host, who was pregnant, selected the judges who were instructed to give a numerical score (the score being 0 – 10). The score was based on the poets’ content and performance. I was a little hesitant when the host asked me to be a judge. Since this was the first time, I was scared that I wasn’t going to be a fair judge. The host explained to me the basic rules for the contest and how the poets are selected. The first rule one is that each poem must be the poet’s own work. The second is that each poet gets only three minutes to read or say the poem. The third is that they can’t use any musical instrument or costumes and the fourth and last one is that from the score the poets receive the high and low scores are dropped and the middle three are added together giving them a total score of 0 – 30. Before the contest started the microphone was open to other poets. In my opinion there were a couple of poets who were good. After the opening performance was done, the host presented a poet who has competed before. Her name was Gypsee. She performed for about 45 minutes, the content of her work was very good and her performance was excellent. I think she has practice a lot. I remember clearly two of her poems. One talked about crossing the Canadian bridge into the United States as an immigrant (she was born in Albania). The second one was about her childhood and soldiers with shotguns. During the slam there was different kind of poetry. It was very interesting to listen to a diverse range of work within the slam. It included love poetry, social issues, personal problems and even some were kind of comic. What I really like was the range of poets presented; they are free to do work in any style on any subject. I will recommend it to my friends and I would like to go back, it was a nice experience.