LEARNING FROM THE SLAM POETS

By Rita Grimaldi 

November 7, 2017

I am a traditional storyteller. I also tell traditional stories that I write. Storytellers often wonder why the Slam Poets have such a following particularly among young people while few young people are attracted to storytelling. So when the Slam Poets had a national conference in my city I wanted to go and find out why so many young people were attracted to slam poetry. Here is what I learned from the events I attended.

1.      Young people are the majority of Slam Poets.

The first event I attended was a panel discussion - a moderator and five panelists. One woman gave her age as 41 years while the others appeared to be in their 20’s. There was a diversity of ethnic backgrounds and physical appearance.

For my question of why young people are attracted to slam poetry, two statements struck me as important.

One member of the panel observed that competition trumps community: competition trumps all.

And the 41-year-old woman said she’d observed that white male poets received higher scores in competitions.

The Difference: In our storytelling community, competitive storytelling is generally not available. However, there are occasional events such as The Moth or Story Slams featuring tellers of personal tales who are competing for points or prizes. In my community, these competitions are not available. And for traditional storytellers there are no competitions.

Our local Slam Poets, on the other hand, meet monthly and compete for marks with a three-minute poem which may be either recited from memory or read from notes. It may be the case that competition brings rewards that storytelling in our community cannot give.

2.      Slam poets write themselves into their stories

The second event I attended at the Slam Conference was a master class by legendary Canadian storyteller Dan Yashinsky.

Dan talked about many things but my key take away was the critical importance of increasing audience attention by writing into the story, people and characters who may in everyday life, actually be in the audience’s environment. For example, when he’s telling stories to children in a hospital setting, Dan adds in the doctors and nurses that provide care to the children. In his experience, this definitely increases his child audience’s attention. I take this as a form of ‘writing yourself in’.

It is very appealing, Dan observed, to write content about those in your environment who are in a relationship with yourself.

                         

                             Dan Yashinsky storytelling

So as a traditional storyteller that uses mythic content to tell stories, here is how I write myself in: I use carefully selected mythic content to represent my life experience and myself in the stories I tell.

                    

Rita in mouse mask and costume storytelling

Last fall, myself and two others from the Peterborough Storytellers went to a Montessori school to tell stories. As I prepared my traditional stories for the children, I decided to tell a traditional Baba Yaga story and follow that with a Baba Yaga story I had written. After telling both stories, I planned to teach the children how to write their own stories using the traditional content.

But this version of ‘writing yourself in’, it is not the form commonly used by the Slam Poets. Their version of ‘writing themselves in’ has a certain, easily recognizable presence, rhythm and cadence.

My final experience with the Slam Poets will explore rhythm and cadence.

                

3.      Slam Poets use Body and Rhythm to write themselves into their stories

I have put Jamaal’s workshop ad above because it tells of his intention for the workshop. 

Jamaal’s principle is that writing helps control extreme environments. Jamaal calls the deep experience of telling a personal story in rhythm and cadence an ‘outer body exchange’. He emphasizes that the first step toward the experience of this exchange is to know the intention you want to communicate to your audience. To illustrate how intention works, he asked us to use only one word to represent our intention for a whole poem.

Each person performed their word for the workshop audience. During this part of the exercise, Jamaal often repeated that only one word, embedded in a poem, can affect people a great deal.

Here is Jamaal’s full pattern is - Intention, Ritual and Exchange.

Ritual is involved in preparing for the exchange. Part of the ritual of preparation is to see the exchange of your story or poem with others as a gift. But, as in all gift giving, you must always feel you can say yes or no about sharing it with others.

The final ‘exchange’ is a performer to audience. Perhaps that is why he uses the term ‘outer body exchange’ because the performer’s intention is carried out through the ritual of performance using the movements of his or her body and the sound of the physical body’s voice.

Speed and Exchange

Back at my home, I watched many videos of Jamaal. I observed that he always spoke in cadence but the speed of the cadence changed. When he was competing, he spoke very quickly, probably to fit the complete text of what he intended to say into the 3-minute rule of the competition. But when not competing, he slowed down the exchange, often adding music to it. Each speed in its own unique way was powerful.

Conclusion – Here’s what I learned about the Slam Poets

·       Competition and marks are important to people engaged in the slam poetry art form.

·       Writing yourself into a personal story is essential to this art form.

·       The speed of the exchange depends on the competition rules.

·       Jamaal’s pattern of intention, ritual and exchange was powerful.  I am still absorbing its truth. At home, I wrote a poem using the Slam Poet cadence. Part of what Jamaal had demonstrated in his workshop came to me. But I know that it will take a very long time and many poems to reach Jamaal’s level of skill in audience sharing.

As a traditional storyteller, the art of the Slam Poets gives me a lot of techniques and concepts to think about.

As to the question of why the young people are attracted to slam poetry and not to storytelling perhaps the answer lies in competition or the cadence of the words or on the ability to choose to read poems from cell phones or paper. In my world of storytelling no reading is allowed.

Which leads me to further questions:

Could there be competitions that involve traditional storytelling?

Could we sponsor Moth competitions for personal storytelling in Peterborough?

Could traditional stories be told in the cadence of slam poetry?