2003 National Poetry Slam Diary by Matt Mason of the Omaha Slam Team

Huh?

So Omaha sends this team of poets to this National Poetry Slam, an actually international competition for performing poets. How do poets compete? With poems, of course, judged by 5 yahoos chosen out of the audience. Anyway, the Omaha team was Sarah McKinstry-Brown, Bad Andy, Dominique Garay, and myself, with Sara Lihz and Katie F-S coaching, Bruce Koborg and the Diva managing, and Jim Morrison as the alternate, ready to jump in should a meteorite or laryngitis strike down a team member.

This year's Nationals were in Chicago, around the Wicker Park area, in bars, coffee shops, and theaters where 63 teams from Vancouver to Miami duked it out in 3-team bouts to determine which team 5 random yahoos in an audience would declare the best in the world. It was a good time.

Day 1, Wednesday, August 6

Woke up in some greasy excuse for a hotel on the edge of Chicago, my throat half shut with something that seems in the tonsilitis family, my neck muscles seized up like they'd been trying to strangle me all night. And it's a beautiful morning.

The National Poetry Slam is a crazy exercise in choreographed literature, performance poets from across the continent here to represent their home city in crazy competition where three teams at a time deliver their poems with voice and body, hoping to fool 5 judges chosen from the audience into thinking that what they're giving is worth taking. Tonight, a first-year team from Omaha tries to see what we can do against Pittsburgh and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

We're at a coffee shop called the Filter early enough to see the bout before ours: Albuquerque is trying to knock off New Orleans and Ithaca. This place is so packed that I end up wadded between a couch and the back window. But at least I can see the stage. It's one of those nights where a team of strong writers and performers watches helplessly as the judges seem more impressed with things other than, say, creativity. Albuquerque throws out some gorgeously written poems only to see New Orleans get higher scores with gimmicky poems, poems about how much the they love their momma which may not be as original or well written, but, dammit, it can make a judge feel like if they don't give it a good score, the audience will think they hate their mommas; so they exorcise the guilt by throwing high scores.

Not what I want to see before we go up. But that's how it goes, I mostly end up running my own poems in my head to make sure I don't stumble or stutter later.

When our bout starts, I'm relieved to see we drew the "C" slot, meaning we read 3rd. Each round rotates the order, ABC, BCA, CAB, ABC, to mix things up. The main thing anyone wants is NOT getting A, as whoever reads first in the night is often hosed since scores tend to rise as the night goes on, something known as "Score creep."

So we're confident, we feel good, we like the world. We send up Dominique at the end of round 1 to do a great poem called "Sex and Violence" which makes fun of movies and popular entertainment. And the judges don't get the poem. Hard to believe as it's fairly obvious it's from the point of view of some crazy Hollywood guy who LOVES sex and violence but that the poem means the opposite, most grade schoolers get this. Judges at tonight's poetry slam, though? No guarantees.

So we start off behind, but Bad Andy knocks his poem out of the park with an amazing delivery of "Letter to Memphis," an amazing poem, that catches us up most of the way; then Sarah nails her poem beautifully, and after 3 rounds, we're tied with Ann Arbor and ahead of Pittsburgh by 3 tenths of a point.

Pittsburgh sends up a group piece at the start of the last round, all 4 team members are up doing something or other, and they get the highest scores of the night.

So next, Ann Arbor sends up some surreal thing about a man having his leg humped by a dog. I stare in disbelief as I continue going over my poem about war and government hype and stuff like that. I end up needing to make up a lot of points with it and need something incredible. Once I get on stage, though, I feel good, and I dig in, and I deliver "Code Orange" better than I ever have in my freaking life. We needed a miracle and it looked like we got it.

Well, okay, the judges did score it higher than the leg humping, but still short of Pittsburgh. That wasn't the miracle.

The Ann Arbor coach talks to us about some sort of buzz with Pittsburgh's group piece; turns out during a line about not having any money, a Pittsburgh poet somehow pulls his hand out of his pocket with a scrap of paper or something in it: that would be a prop, something against the rules. That would also be impossible, I think, as everyone knows the rules and everyone has gone over their poems until their tongues bled by this point. I never saw it, as I was churning my poem over in my head while they were on stage.

After a great amount of deliberation, nothing gets decided. Witnesses all over say he did, the Pittsburgh coach admits he did, two video cameras show he did, but the emcee doesn't want to make such a big decision. So we end up going back to our greasy motel, not sure if we won or not.

Day 2.

Upon waking, we run down to the slam headquarters where we find out we did win the bout. This is cause to celebrate as, with 63 teams in the tournament and only 16 going on to the semi finals, you almost have to pull first place in both your bouts to make the third night. The only downside now is that there are open mics, slams, and workshops all day with all sorts of different themes. But instead of going to these, we need to get our asses ready for tonight against Columbia, SC and Worcester, MA. A bit of a change from last year when I was on the Des Moines team where we pulled last place in our first bout and knew we didn't need to worry about much beside enjoying ourselves for the rest of the time.

But we're damned excited as it's not easy to just walk in from Omaha and get an audience to pay attention to you. These folks want to see your New York, your LA because everyone assumes that the slam poetry will be fantastic from a city like that. But Omaha? So we don't always start with the crowd on our side, and I learned last year on Des Moines that we need to do a little stronger convincing so that people realize it's okay to show a team from the midwest as much respect and attention as a coastal team. A few more nights like last night and they'll realize they can use the bathroom when New York's up, not Omaha.

And to come out ahead of Ann Arbor, a solid team from one of the oldest slam scenes around, and Pittsburgh, a scene that's been running with a lot of respect for years, was really something. Especially in a bout so tight with strong performances by all the teams.

On the scorecards from the night before, Worcester is ranked 16th, Omaha is ranked 11th and I'm individually ranked 18th, as I got the highest individual's score of the night in our bout. Granted, that may mean about as much as being named the Duke of Pudding, but it still makes me feel damn good. I celebrate by napping before practice.

This time, we're at the Chopin Theater, a great space to perform in. And again we draw the "C" slot. I start hearing that line from Blues Brothers in my head, "we're on a mission from God," as things are definitely going our way.

We start off well with Bad Andy knocking off a hell of a piece called "Brothers of the Book", then I go up with a funny-slash-political poem about accepting John Ashcroft as my personal savior. It's a sure-fire hit. Except when you do it in a theater where most of the people there don't know who John Ashcroft is (hint: United States Attorney General). I'm up there, one minute into a three minute poem where 3 random people are laughing themselves red in the face while the rest of the audience looks at me as if I'm speaking Portugese.

At this point, I figure we're screwed. Dominique goes up and repairs a little damage, but we're still in trouble as Worcester is doing fantastic and Columbia is, well, I don't know what they were doing but since they were sending up poets called "Insight" and "Messiah," I was really hoping we didn't lose to them or else we'd all have to come up with pretentious new names of our own so we wouldn't feel so low. I start wanting to call myself "The Shadow What Walks in The Summer Moonlight When The Llamas Are Asleep in God's Gentle Breezes When The Asparagus Barks at Midnight."

To close the night, we send up a group piece with Sarah and Andy, a poem of Sarah's called "Paralyzed Night" which is a gorgeous reflection on September 11th, a true poem, backed up by Andy providing a newscaster's voice, music, and sound effects. At this point, I didn't think it was statistically possible to win. So you might say I was surprised when we won the night by a tenth of a point, the crowd went wild, we went wild, all of Worcester was over in our corner hugging us, it was a hell of an end. And we were freaking out as here we were, a first-year team almost certainly going on to the sweet sixteen round of semi-finals.

A few of us get ourselves a burrito afterward, and we run into other teams both happy and not so happy. I find out that Denver also made semis after years of coming inches away from it. Paulie Lipman from the Denver squad tells me they got two first place finishes. I tell him I had two ones and a burrito. He looks jealous.

I end up going home as soon as I can so that I can sleep and be ready. I do get home early, but I don't sleep much. Stupid brain. How does a species survive when we can't turn off our thoughts and sleep when we really need to?

Day 3

I'm up too early, run into town, and get the word officially that Omaha is ranked 10th and in the semis. I mill about with others as we congratulate and console one another. Then I find myself a sandwich and look for more sleep.

Our bout tonight is a 4-team bout, with us going against Hollywood, Austin, and Pensacola. I know all three have been through tough bouts, meaning they aren't likely to have their very strongest poems left for us. But you never know.

We have a small practice, we all seem solid. We should, we've all come out so far and given some of the best performances of our lives.

The show is at the Chopin again, which I like, as it's a good space. We draw the A slot this time, which is disappointing but not death for us as we're good enough. And it's wild, the theater is full, it's overfull, with people splayed out on the staircases and standing on the sides, it's amazing.

Andy goes up first and knocks it home, everyone can see that, right? Ah, the judges. We end up watching as Pensacola and Hollywood send up poems which I've already forgotten what they were about but which outscore us. Sarah goes up and does amazing, delivering a lush poem about young women and suicide with lines as complicated but beautiful as a cactus' blossoms. Then we throw a group piece in my slot, a poem called "Masturbation" acted out by all 4 of us as we weave in and out of lines, get the audience laughing and cheering. Not the judges so much. A few people in the audience behind us watching the scores are yelling "What does it take!?" But then Dominique goes up, after some poems about the divisiveness of race which were more about the concept than the writing (that's code for: decent concept, sloppy writing), and sends up a fantastic poem about what's the same in all of us, up there strolling around the stage as if he owned it: and for those three minutes he did, getting one of the top scores of the night.

Austin ends up winning the bout, and that's a good thing. Austin brought some real poetry, they were fantastic, and they deserved it. It was especially good as I'd watch a poet from another team performing on stage and the Austin team was sometimes as loud as that other team's entourage cheering them on; they were clearly here for the love of it, and I'll be rooting for Austin at finals tomorrow night.

So after months of practicing and fundraising and choreographing, we're done. We don't have to be up tomorrow morning. I don't know what to do with myself.

After all this, we head to the individual finals, where the 10 folks with the highest scores from the previous 2 nights' bouts duke it out (I ended up 32nd, though that could have been any of us... as good as Andy, Sarah, and Dominique performed, I was the one who went up late in the evening both nights, after the score creep had brought the scores up). It was interesting to see who got the highest scores, some didn't strike me as stunning, but I loved the guy who won, Mike McGee, a guy from San Jose with an amazing mix of humor and message.

Day 4

So today, there's nothing official to do. I hit a meeting where everyone can come and talk about what's been going on, new policy decisions by Poetry Slam, Inc (the organization in charge of putting on the National Slam), stuff like that. There's usually a softball game on the Saturday of the week, so I'm disgusted to find that's not the case this year. I'm so angry, I go home and nap.

The finals were interesting. They didn't so much thrill me, but I guess I was fairly distracted with the flush of what had been a surprising and excellent week for us. We came in with a lot of help from individuals and businesses around Omaha and Lincoln, and we did our best. Hell, sometimes it seemed we did better than our best. Even if we hadn't made the semi finals, even if we'd pulled 3rd both nights, we were amazing every time we went on stage, and people are going to remember Omaha after this showing.

For the first night in a long time, the team split up, going to different parties. Sarah and I ended up at the official party, chatting with various poets, listening to stories, having a hell of a time as people came up to us to tell us how impressive we are and we went to talk to those who we thought were amazing, all of us realizing that we might soon finally get some sleep.

Full Scores for our First Bout
Full Scores for our Second Bout

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