The wait is over for hundreds of spoken word devotees wondering who they will face in the opening rounds of this year’s National Poetry Slam in Madison. Organizers conducted a random draw this week to determine match-ups in the opening two rounds of the competition, which will be held in multiple venues across downtown over the first week of August. Teams hailing from the same city will face off against one another, old rivalries will be renewed, and new ones will be born over dozens of verbal duels between many of the best spoken word poets in the country.
“I think every bout has potential to be magic,” says David Hart, an organizer for the slam who along with his fellow volunteers is busy with a broad array of final tasks before the event begins on Monday, August 3. Ongoing fundraising, venue preparation, volunteer wrangling, media outreach and more remains on their plate as they pull together this largest national slam to date.
A total of 76 teams from cities across 30 states, along with two Canadian provinces and the City of Lights, will be taking the stage at the 2008 National Poetry Slam. The competition is divided into three stages; two rounds of preliminary bouts, semi-finals, and finals, with the number of teams winnowed significantly at each step along the way. In order to get a shot at the title, though, the teams must make it through the first stage.
There are 38 total bouts in a pair of preliminary rounds, which run over the course of three nights from Tuesday, August 4 through Thursday, August 6. Every team is scheduled to compete in two bouts apiece, with one night left open for rest. Every bout pits four teams against one another, and each team typically has four or five competing poets. There are four opportunities per bout for a team to perform and score points, which are awarded by a panel of five judges randomly chosen from the audience before the performances begin. The scores from both bouts are then tabulated, and the teams with the top 20 cumulative scores will move on to the semi-final round on Friday. The four highest-scoring teams in the semis will then advance to the finals on Saturday.
It’s a swift and unforgiving series of eliminations, one that requires competing poets to remain at the top of their game.
The Madison team came close to the semifinals at the 2007 National Poetry Slam in Austin, Texas, where it finished 32nd out of 75 teams, only a handful of spots away from making the cut. Hart notes that the outcomes of previous years’ bouts are not necessarily a good gauge for determining whether a team is a contender or not. “Even the established and known teams that have traditionally come and done well depend on what kind of poets they bring,” he says.
This year the host squad -- known as the Madison Urban Spoken Word Collective -- will be facing teams from two national hotbeds of spoken word in its two opening bouts.
The first shot for Madison will be Bout #15 at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, August 6, when they will be facing PuroSlam from San Antonio, H-Town Slam from Houston, and Open Mic Poetry @ The Bridge Café from Manchester, New Hampshire. Texas is one of the national epicenters of spoken word, and though teams from Austin and Dallas have won more renown, this will be a solid opening challenge for the hometown squad.
Preliminary round two will find Madison competing in Bout #32 at 10 p.m. on Thursday, August 7, when they will be facing The City Slam from San Francisco, Oakland Poetry Slam from across the bay in Oakland, and Slamarillo from the north Texas city of Amarillo. The Bay Area is one of the original homes of poetry slam, and squads from both cities have gone far in national competitions over the last decade, so Madison should have another battle on its hands on the road to the semifinals. This bout will also be a rematch against the Amarillo team, which Madison faced and outscored during the second round in Austin last year.
“I think it was a fair draw,” says Hart, who is slammaster for Urban Spoken Word at Genna’s Lounge and a member of the Madison National Poetry Slam team in 2004 and 2005. “All of the teams will show promising work,” he continues, looking at the competition Madison will have. “We haven’t faced most of them in the past, but we’re certainly looking forward to hearing what everybody has to say. Though they have their work cut out for them, I look for our team to do really, really well.”
Hart also notes that the Madison team will be keeping an eye on and supporting the Mecca squad from Milwaukee, particularly its second bout that will include against HawaiiSlam from Honolulu. The complete listing of the preliminary rounds draw shows many more match-ups. Passes and tickets for National Poetry Slam 2008 are available for purchase now, so don’t procrastinate, as the hometown bouts will fill up fast.
“Just from the bits and pieces I’ve heard from the team,” concludes Hart, “the Madison bouts promise to be hot.”
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