Presenter: Hannah Golden
Co-presenters: Alex Dang, Sarah Hovet, Sarah Menard, Dante Douglas
Mentor: Corbett Upton, English
Creative Work Presentation: C4 (Maple Room)
Majors: Journalism and Spanish
The UO Poetry Slam (UOPS) was founded by Hannah Golden and Alexander Dang to build a community and audience for poetry on campus that embodies the inclusiveness and excitement of slam poetry. Poetry and language belong to all of us, not just a select few, and by foregrounding the form’s communal aspects, slam challenges hierarchical notions of what forms and experiences constitute art, specifically when it comes to poetry, and seeks to make poetry accessible to, and inclusive of, all voices, experiences, subjectivities. In this presentation, we will explain the origins of slam poetry and show how the form is distinguished from traditional poetry readings in both its ethics and its format, most obviously by the fact that poets’ work is limited to a 3-minute original poem scored on a 10-point scale by five judges randomly selected from the audience, and will conclude with performances by each slam team member. Additionally, we will detail the team’s journey to competing at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI), the top competition for college slam poets. In fall 2014, we held auditions, attracting a wide range of students, who competed in six bouts. After the dust settled, we had our team. Some of us had never performed or even written poetry before these tryouts. Throughout the process of recruiting and building a team that can be competitive anywhere in the state, we have held to our ideal of an inclusive, democratic community with an insistence on high-quality work and an atmosphere of mutual encouragement. We began the slam community here at UO to create a forum where all can express themselves – anyone can be a poet, and anyone can appreciate poetry. We are excited to show you our work now.