#npsoak

The National Poetry Slam was RIDICULOUS in the best way. Imagine hundreds of people you’ve spent hours ogling over on the internet running around Oakland and raising hell. People having cypher circles and spitting brand new work on street corners and in hotel rooms and in elevators and concrete stairwells. Sneaking into the hotel pool after hours. Smoking apple pipes in front of the lobby. Playing cards and telling stories in the courtyard. Cheering on your hometown slam while repping your new city. Getting life advice from slam legends. Making friends you might never see again, but shit, going all in anyways. Finding love everywhere you look for it. Magic. Magic. Magic.

I’ve just returned from Oakland, CA and this year’s installment of the National Poetry Slam. The week was...great in all the ways that Nats is usually great, awful in the ways that Nats is usually awful, and I walked away with some generally mixed feelings about the whole experience. A few firsts (for me) this year: After missing qualifying for semifinals (by three tenths or five tenths of a point, depending on how mad at myself I want to be), I was able to sacrifice for one of the semifinal bouts; I spent a great deal of time in conversation with some folks for Colorado; and I got hissed at mid-performance. Woo.

Let me say first that one of the things that I absolutely love about poetry slam, is the audience’s ability to have visceral, vocal responses to a poem and its performance, in real time. For me, those responses are generally positive, due in large part I’m sure to “growing up” in the slam family of North Carolina (and in a large slam context, the SoFried regional), where, we are above all else, supportive of the poet on stage. We clap; we cheer; we hold our breath; we hold our disagreements ‘til the end of the night and talk about those things outside. In short: we do not hiss.

I met the aforementioned Colorado poets in a pizza shop after both of our bouts Wednesday night. One of them (whom I’ll call Frank because I am horrible with names), was particularly heartbroken because he had been hissed during his performance that evening. The poem was about his experience of growing up in a home where he was made to feel unsafe if ever he questioned his or his father’s white, male, cis, straight privilege to his family until he adopted some pretty racist, sexist, homophobic ideals of his own, and what the work of unlearning those things has been like. There’s a line in the poem that begins, “the first time I used the word ‘faggot’…” which met with immediate hissing from other poets in the bout, with no regard for the work that the poem is trying to do. My offense? Using the word “whore” in a line that gives the definition of the word “whore.”

Now. I’m very aware that both of those words bring with them a pretty intense history of homophobia and slut-shaming and violence that are by no means excusable just because they were offered up in a poem. I am really not here for a discussion about who can use what words when and with whom. But, I seriously question the intent behind hissing at a poet during a poem, if not just for increasing language/behavior policing by the PSI “in-crowd” under the guise of maintaining safe space that I’ve seen at Nationals over the years.

Frank had no idea why he was being hissed at until he and I talked through the poem at the pizza place. What he did know...that he was doing a poem about what happens to boys who are silenced about their privilege at an early age, and was effectively told by the other poets in the room that he needed to shut up about it. As for me, only one poet in the room made an attempt to explain to me why she was offended by my use of the word….on twitter….the day after the bout...after I made a contribution to #npsshade. And while I definitely appreciate her coming to me, how much more powerful could that conversation have been if it didn’t come on the heels of being made to feel like I needed to defend myself?

Hey ya’ll! My coach Susan took this video of me performing at the Rookie Open Mic at NPS. I had a lil hiccup in there, but I think it came out pretty well.