D e s e r t E x p o s u r e 
January
2008
Slam Dunk
Got a poem to recite? Just bring it to the Silver City Poetry Slam, where literature and competition combine to encourage local poets to find their voices.
Story and photos by Donna Clayton Lawder
It's a cold Saturday night in Silver City, but the big front windows at Javalina Coffee House are steamed up from the heat and bustle inside. The place is jammed with dozens of people — teens, young adults, a handful of families with small children and a few silver-haired seniors. The espresso machine chugs out ebony shots and the baristas laugh and call out orders to each other, working assembly-line fashion in a synchronized dance, whipping out lattes, cups of tea and small plates of baked treats for the gathering throng.
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Slam poet, and frequent Slam Master,
Sam Castello performs at Javalina Coffee House in Silver City. |
There's not a seat to be found in either of the java joint's two sizeable rooms, as people settle in for the Silver City Poetry Slam. The evening brings together two terms not ordinarily mentioned in the same breath: "poetry" and "crowd."
At 6:30, the sign-up sheet has officially opened. Would-be competing poets — called "slammers" — jam the table to sign in for the precious 12 slots.
Damian Davies, the brains and driving force behind the event, and Sam Castello, director of The Wellness Coalition, a sponsor of the Slam, are working together to coordinate tonight's event. Davies chats with some youths in one area of the coffee house while Castello calls out instructions and requests, invites people to sit down, and generally tries to whip up an atmosphere of excitement.
"We also need judges. We're counting on you, our audience, to be our judges," Castello announces. He kneels at a table by a young woman who seems to have expressed interest in being a judge and answers her questions, looking intently and sincerely into her eyes. With a big smile, Castello writes her name down on the pad he's been carrying around.
Both Davies and Castello take turns emceeing the Silver City Slams — that is, serving as "Slam Master" — and they also are slammers themselves. Both will be competing tonight.
The Slam Master, Castello explains, sees to the quality of the event: setting the line-up of the poets who sign up, choosing the "sacrifice slammer" for the evening — turns out it's not as grisly as it sounds — moderating the event and making sure the judging and scoring take place according to the established Slam Rules of Order.
To allow both Davies and Castello to perform this evening themselves, a guest Slam Master has been enlisted. Lee Francis, a member of the 2005 Albuquerque Slam team, will do the honors. That 2005 Albuquerque team, Castello points out, won the national Poetry Slam Championship.
"Lee's a fabulous host," Castello enthuses. "Wait 'til you see how he gets the audience into it."
Davies calls from the front of the room that they also need some "open mic-ers," performers of the spoken word who will not compete in tonight's Slam, but who have something they'd like to offer to the crowd.
Castello explains, "There are a couple of reasons to have open mic-ers. One, to read what they've got, to be able to read without having to compete. It's an introduction to being up front. And, two, well, stalling," he adds with a laugh. "We're not quite ready to start but we want to try to keep people in the room, so the open mic-ers will entertain them and grab some more audience from people who might have been just getting their coffee and passing through."
Davies, still recruiting, calls out, "Oh, and we need a scorekeeper, too." He laughs, as if filling this key position were an afterthought. All supporting staff, in fact, save the key players of Castello and Davies, are volunteers plucked from the audience the night of the event.
Castello and Davies are encouraged — to put it mildly — over the Silver City Slam's success, evidenced by its growth. Starting out with just Davies' passion for Slams and a couple of open-mic poetry nights around town, the event now draws large audiences and poets from all over the Southwest. The Silver City Slam has become a venue officially recognized by Poetry Slam, Inc., the non-profit organization that oversees the international coalition of poetry slams.
For the uninitiated, "poetry slams" combine spoken-word literature and competition in a sort of latterday beatnik event that originated in Chicago in the mid-1980s. According to The Complete Idiot's Guide to Slam Poetry: "Slam poetry is the brainchild of Marc Smith (So What!) and the blue collar intellectual eccentrics who crammed into the Get Me High Lounge on Monday nights from November 1984 to September 1986 for a wide-open poetry experience. Finger-poppin' hipster Butchie (James Dukaris) owned the place and allowed anything to happen, and it usually did. The experimenters in this new style of poetry presentation gyrated, rotated, spewed and stepped their words along the bar top, dancing between the bottles, bellowing out the backdoor, standing on the street or on their stools, turning the west side of Chicago into a rainforest of dripping whispers or a blast furnace of fiery elongated syllables, phrases, snatches of scripts and verse that electrified the night."
From Chicago, poetry slams spread nationwide, eventually reaching such far corners of the continent as Silver City, where slams are now held as often as twice a month. Upcoming slams are set for Jan. 12 and 26, Feb. 9 and 23, plus a two-day invitational to select the Silver City Slam Team, March 7 and 8.
"Every week we're getting more poets," Castello says. "At this last slam, there were easily 70 people in the audience. That's on a Saturday night in a coffee shop!"
Davies recounts the local event's beginnings and evolution. "The 2005 Albuquerque champion team came down here," he says. "Then I put together the Monsoon Slam, a two-day event. We got some money from the Drug Free Communities for that. The first night was a youth slam, and the next night was the adult slam. A bunch of Albuquerque people came down, so that brought in an audience."
But building a highly successful event for his community is only part of Davies' satisfaction. As a coordinator of positive youth development programs with The Wellness Coalition in Silver City, he has deeply held beliefs in the value of the slam for local youth and community.
"My theory on it is that it encourages youth expression. The more they're talking about their lives, their goals, the more they're expressing themselves. It's empowering," Davies says. "They start to realize that their voice matters, that it has an impact, and so they're more likely to make their expression a positive expression. Writing and performance is key to understanding yourself, I think, and knowing yourself better is a good thing."
Though Davies is, undeniably, the driving force behind the event, he gives plenty of credit to others. "I've had a lot of help and support from the local community. We couldn't do it without the audience. And Polly (Cook, owner of Javalina Coffee House) has been one of our biggest advocates. She's really supportive of local youth."
At tonight's slam, the "stalling" finally seems over. Guest Slam Master Lee Francis is introduced and steps up to the microphone. He's a dapper, dark-haired young man with glasses, wearing a T-shirt and cream-colored blazer — sort of an updated "Miami Vice" look. His delivery is smooth and fast-paced, like a high-energy commercial voice-over.