Why slams and what makes good slam poetry?

With a week to go to the Hammer & Tongue national poetry slam final, I thought I’d put some thoughts together about why we have slams and what I think makes good poetry.

The job of the critic, said T. S. Eliot, is “the elucidation of texts and the correction of tastes.” You might not like the sound of the latter phrase, but let’s follow its implications more carefully; elucidate it, if you will. Now, if you believe that all experience of art is subjective (i.e. there is no such thing as good and bad art, just what different people like) then ‘correcting tastes’ might seem a pointless, even elitist task. And so it is if only a predestined elect get the job of taste-correction. Indeed this may be what snobbish, protestant Eliot would have wanted.

Hammer & Tongue National Slam Final 2013 @ Wilton’s Music Hall, Sat 8th June. 2:30-10:30pm

This year’s slam final promises to be bigger and better than ever before. Winners and runners-up from across the Hammer & Tongue regions will be joined by slam winners from Cheltenham UK All Stars, Swindon Literature Festival and Bang Said the Gun in London and in Manchester to create as comprehensive as possible National Poetry Slam.

The venue is once again, Wilton’s Music Hall – the world’s oldest surviving music hall, home to cabaret, musicals and music hall and now slam poetry. Highlights from last year’s event, curtesy of Rob Blake:

Tickets are £15/12 in advance or £16.50 on the door. Last year it was sold out and people were turned away, so book them online asap! Tickets get you entry for the whole day so you can come and go as you please http://wiltons.org.uk/event.php?p=591

The Last Days of Thatcher

We watch Margaret Thatcher’s
bloated face and cloudy mind;
remember the hardlined features,
the decisive fist, the woman not for turning;
as she stumbles in jumble-brain confusion;
discharged from hospital;
not long to go now.

Aftermath, Louis MacNeice

I picked up a couple of Louis MacNeice books when I was down in Brighton recently. MacNeice was the son of a Northern Irish protestant rector and grew up in Carrickfergus although he was sent, aged 10, to English boarding school, after his depressed mother died. His reputation is generally attached to, and overshadowed by, W. H. Auden’s, with whom he collaborated on a travel book called ‘Letters from Iceland’. Born in 1902, he died in ’63 and I am just starting to get to know his work.

Keep Calm and Carry On

First they came for the disability benefits…
Keep calm and carry on!
Or was that first?
First, didn’t we have unprecedented levels of stress,

The Death of Poetry greatly exaggerated

Two things strike me about Nathan Thompson’s online article in The Independent about “performance poetry slams” being “a further nail in the coffin” of poetry. Firstly, it says something about the media as it exists online today and secondly, it says something about the current view of poetry.

To summarise: Thompson’s article says: “Poetry is dead” and young people do not know any poets. Slams are part of modern “quick fix culture” and thus further destroy our ability to appreciate good poetry. Defenders of performance poetry have wrongly “politicised” the debate and are attacking an “ivory tower” that has never existed. Poetry is accessible, but only to people who have the patience to take it in slowly, “like sipping a fine wine”. See full text here if you want to read the full article.

Coughing Up

Poem written about a true story that happened on a London train. Happy moral embedded. Filmed by Rob Blake with help from Susannah Trevelyan. Published in ‘Life in Transit’ by Influx Press

Crossing Continents

A poem of disillusion about the conformist homogeneity of modern Europe brandscapes. Filmed in non-homogenous Hackney by non-conforming Rob Blake. Poem published in ‘Life in Transit’ by Influx Press

Trapped

Poem of weary disappointment in the unthinking herd tendency of crowds. True story of a hungover Sunday morning on a train/train station. Filmed around Hackney by Rob Blake. Published in ‘Life in Transit’ by Influx Press

Ode to the Bicycle

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/11/14/angry-sam-poet-ode-to-bicycle_n_2128492.html

Poem recorded for Huffington Post, thanks to Sam Parker at Huff. Poem published in ‘Life in Transit’ by Influx Press. Click the link