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.

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.

"Welcome to the Silver City Sla-a-a-a-am!" he yells. The excitement barometer in the room rises as his words rush out in a glib cascade — a rollicking description of the evening-to-be, what the audience can expect, how the poets will come up, one and all, to pour out their hearts. "It's gonna be a helluva show tonight! Are you rea-a-a-a-a-ady?!" The audience responds with whoops and applause.

The first of three open-mic performers takes the stage. A young man in an oversized New York Yankee sweatshirt and knit cap with the Yankee logo pulled down to his eyes lets loose with a rapid-fire poem reminiscent of rap music.

"Ignorance shouldn't hap-pen," he spits out. He gestures with stab of his hands, sharply, intensely, his voice rising and falling, his cadence insistent, passionate. And his lines, yes, rhyming, rhyming, rhyming.

At the end of the piece, he simply falls silent. The audience whoops and applauds again.

"I have one more," he says, almost shyly.

He pauses, takes a breath, and begins reciting his next piece, this one starting off with an expletive, along the lines of "Forget what you told me." The audience does not seem put off — four-letter words are allowed, within reason, at slams. The young man finishes, the audience applauds, and Slam Master Francis steps onto the stage to introduce the next open-mic performer, Rick Davis.

A well-known local musician, Davis pulls out a small notebook. His performance could hardly be more different from the last. Davis reads a very spiritual piece, repeating phrases about "The One" and "the source of all." His voice is soft but intense, and he looks up frequently to make eye contact with his audience.

Next up is a girl who looks to be about 10 years old, introduced in a booming voice by Francis as The Exceptional Kennedy!, and welcomed to the stage by warm applause. Dressed in a long-sleeve T-shirt with Ralph Lauren logo, her red purse slung over her shoulder and a pink cap with white shearling fur trim, she holds a sheet of her writing in one hand while clenching the other, perhaps in nervousness.

She reads her rhyming verse in a small but clear voice. One memorable phrase includes the words "deep dish pizza," which brings a delighted titter from the audience.

This concludes the open-mic portion of the evening. Slam Master Francis returns to the stage and gives a huge introduction to tonight's feature poet, who performs under the name "DaShade Moonbeam." A member of the Austin Slam Poetry Team, "Moonbeam" has traveled from Texas for tonight's special performance.

Featured poets, Castello explains, are not competing for points. They are here to energize the crowd and draw audience: "For our Slam, we always try to have a feature. We try to give them some kind of travel stipend and let them sell CDs of their work and any other merchandise they might have. DaShade came all the way up from El Paso, so we want to give something back to him. And our traveling feature poets agree to give a workshop as part of the deal."

Typically eight or nine high-school kids, ages 14 to 18, show up for the youth writing workshops the morning after Slams, Castello says.

And to keep the local poetry talent growing, Davies teaches youth writing workshops two evenings a week at the coffee shop. "Occasionally we meet on the weekends," he says, "and have a weekend class, like with the visiting poets. It started last summer and it's been going on for over a year now. The original group of students has changed, but it's become a solid after-school thing."

A number of Davies' regular writing students are on hand tonight, giving whoops of support to their friends who'll step up to the microphone.

But before they get their chance, it's DaShade Moonbeam. After Francis' rousing introduction, the young African-American man with close-cropped hair steps to the microphone to loud applause. He wears a black T-shirt with a design that looks to be an alien skull wearing headphones, guns crossed beneath in a pirate crossbones motif, the writing overtop resembling graffiti.

He starts with a poem recited from memory, about tough life in the city. "Rat traps and roach motels," he intones. "This house was a broken home." He details the broken walls and doors, then goes on, "You can heal cuts and scrapes, but death is a done deal," ending with the line, "Don't let the roaches and the rats get your hopes and your dreams."

Moonbeam starts his next piece by quietly singing a few lines, reminiscent of a song sung by slaves in fields in the old South, or perhaps by workers on a chain gang. It is soft, powerful, simultaneously sad and hopeful. This leads directly into the spoken part of the poem, a work about struggle. "I'm making payments on my payments," he says with a frustrated edge. He's got "a pocket full of anger and a fist full of strife," he says, then concludes the piece with more soft singing.

Pausing just a moment, Moonbeam then launches into another piece, this one mentioning three little girls with "a monster abuser father" who may be "put away at last."

He ends the piece and looks down, seeming almost exhausted at telling this last tale. He looks up at the audience and talks of his own difficulties as a struggling black man, "trying to change, trying to make a difference." He mentions he's brought CDs of his performances to sell, which draws more applause from the audience.

"Should I keep going?" he asks. The crowd gives an enthusiastic whoop, and he launches into a quiet piece, spoken in measured, syncopated syllables and lines, poetry with an intricate internal rhyme scheme. "DaShade/ the commodity/ is a prodigy," he says, punctuated by measured, dramatic breaths.

MoonBeam completes three more poems before Slam Master Francis holds up one finger to cue the poet that his time is running out.

Moonbeam pauses, then simply says, "I'm done."

The audience whoops and hollers, and Francis implores them to "buy some merch" to support the artist.

Francis returns to the microphone to whip up the audience for the start of the Slam, the competitive portion of the night. Like a game show host who's perhaps had an extra shot in his latte, he yells, "We're ready to sla-a-a-a-am!" He spits out his words rapid fire: "We have 13, count 'em 13 fantastic poets to astound you, amaze you, maybe even make you cry!"

He goes over the rules and regulations of scoring slam poetry in a humorous, glib stream of words, reminiscent of the obligatory recitation about "the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse" on Oscar night. Like the comical, well-rehearsed yells familiar to audiences of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Slam audience calls out animated replies in unison.

Francis asks if there are any newbies to the event — "Slam virgins," if you will. A seasoned bunch at the back of the room, including regular Slam Master Castello, responds. "Forget about those people at the back of the room," Francis yells to a roar of laughter.

He goes into the history of the phenomenon, the rules and scoring procedure. "The poets are competing for you, audience, and for you, judges," Francis says. He introduces the timekeeper and scorekeeper, and explains that of the five judges' scores, the lowest and highest will be dropped, the remaining three scores added together — much like the Olympics.

Slammers get downright serious about the scores. A young man called Cuffee, a slammer from Albuquerque who will perform tonight, has a spiral notebook in front of him, lines and columns carefully drawn for each of this evening's poets.

At a typical Slam, the original 12 poets are reduced to a field of eight, based on their scores from the first round. Scores in the second round reduce the field to four, who compete in a third round, with the ultimate winner emerging at the end.

The Silver City Slam posts the poets' rankings and points on its Web site (groups.google.com/group/silvercityslam) This will become important as the group works toward choosing a Silver City Slam Team to go to the national competition in Addison, Wisc., in August.

"We'll invite 12 poets to compete for the team," Castello explains about the March 7-8 invitational slam. "The first night, all 12 will perform for two rounds. We'll take the eight best scorers and invite them back for a second night, and each will do three pieces. The total score determines the four winners who will go to Wisconsin for us."

The rules and regs humorously covered, Slam Master Francis now explains to the audience the concept of the "sacrifice poet." Chosen by the Slam Master from among the signed-up slammers, the sacrifice poet goes first to warm up the audience and get the judges into a scoring groove. Tonight's "sacrifice poet" is Ian, who begins simply, "Here's a poem I wrote once."

After Ian concludes his piece, Francis asks the judges to hold up their scores, between zero and 10. Half-points are allowed, and in fact can be the deciding factor when things come down to the wire.

"Don't applaud the scores," Francis calls out. "Applaud the poet!" Though it will not earn him any laurels tonight — as the "sacrifice," he's been yanked out of the actual competition — Ian scores a 15, which makes him smile.

Ian is followed by the competing slammers. Some speak confidently and clearly into the microphone. Others, perhaps simply unfamiliar with the performance aspect of slamming, don't use the microphone adequately, their lines lost to all but those seated in the front rows.

Anna, a blonde local teen, recites a poem about a Christmas wish for others' happiness. Mitchell, a young man in a bandana, performs a piece about what it meant for him to learn Haiku poetry. Paul reads his poem from a journal but punctuates his reading with a few powerful gestures. Another poet, whose voice is so low it can hardly be heard, grips the microphone and points it downward, as if it weren't already hard enough to hear him.

Between the performances, Francis reminds the audience to "applaud the poet, people!"

Erin, a regular local slammer, starts out, "First there was a pill," delivering a poignant piece about birth control, responsibility and freedom. A young man named Tony starts out reciting, then falters as he forgets his next line. He starts over, falters again, then pulls a sheet of paper from his pocket — to the audience's encouraging applause — and reads his poem.

Leslie, a tiny woman in a big sweater, so short she must lower the microphone to reach, belts out her poem in a voice that belies her diminutive size. "So I wonder," she begins, "did they tell yo-o-o-ou what they told me. . ."

Next, a striking slender woman with black hair, Esm from the winning 2005 Albuquerque Slam Team, begins her piece with soft singing, then goes right into the spoken word. Her delivery is melodic, measured, not unlike the famed writer, Maya Angelou. She ends with the line, ". . . memories and sea anemones/ and you will be the most bad-assed mermaid this world has ever seen," to loud applause.

Cuffee, also from that winning Albuquerque Slam Team, opens with some sung lines, then heads into spoken words about peace, how the difference between the words "salaam" and "shalom" is just two letters, but that difference becomes a chasm between two cultures. He sings again at the end and then ends hauntingly quiet with the words, "a long time coming."

As soon as he's done performing, Cuffee returns to his seat and waits for his scores to be read, making notations on the line where he's written his own name into the grid.

Damian Davies then takes his turn at the microphone, delivering an onomatopoetic piece about his mother, bliss, superpowers and inspiration. "But, baby, tomorrow I'm gonna learn how to fly!" he finishes.

At his table, Cuffee is still making notes, calculating and then entering Damian's scores. Davies may well be the man to beat tonight.

Slam Master Francis announces a break between rounds. Much of the audience gets up for another round of drinks and to, perhaps, stretch its legs. The atmosphere is charged, and young people gather in small groups, complimenting performers on their work so far.

Castello comments on the Silver City audience's response. "We have a warm and wonderful community. This is a friendly scene. I've been to some Slams where they could eat you up alive," he says with a laugh. "The audience can just turn on you. I've never seen it happen here."

About 15 minutes after round one has ended, Francis advances to the stage and names the eight continuing poets. Then a teen named Maddie, who is being "sacrificed" to start off the second round, recites a piece she's written.

Each of the round-two poets performs and the competitors are winnowed to four slammers to compete in round three. Ultimately, Damian Davies emerges as the winner, receiving a $20 prize from a "passing of the hat," and 15 points toward his rankings. He now stands at the top of the field of local slammers, a feather in his cap as he edges toward making the Silver City Slam Team.

Writing and performing his poetry have been healing activities for him, Davies says, something he hopes more people will try.

"I write because I enjoy it. It's something I can do without any equipment or money, just a pen and pad," he says. "I perform because I feel words are meant to be performed. There's a long tradition of orating and storytelling, and I feel a part of that."

His message to one and all, he says, is to write something.

"Anybody can do it," Davies insists. "I'm a firm believer that anyone can come on stage and be a superstar for three minutes. People ask me how I get up on that stage and say the things I do. I tell people, you just gotta do it, just bring it!"

All Silver City Poetry Slam shows are Open Slams held at Javalina Coffee House, 208 Bullard St. in Silver City. Future dates include Jan. 12, Jan. 26, Feb. 9, Feb. 23, all at 7 p.m. Poet sign-ups begin at 6:30 p.m. March 7-8 will be a two-day invitational slam to select the Silver City Slam Team. For more information, see the Silver City Poetry Slam home page, groups.google.com/group/silvercityslam, and rules, groups.google.com/group/silvercityslam/web/silver-city-slam-rules, and Poetry Slam Inc., www.poetryslam.com