VALLEY POETS DISPLAY TALENT
Hundreds of students, parents watch as poets slam

Slam poetry (a.k.a. spoken word poetry) is a craze that has been sweeping Valley this year due mostly to the work of the AP English teacher Mr. Dan Meester and the founding of a school slam poetry club. This year, the much-anticipated 2nd Annual Poetry Slam competition was a huge success with twenty-two poets and big cash prizes.

Before this year many people did not know what slam poetry was or how it worked. Basically, slam poetry is a form of poetry that is meant to be performed, not simply read out of a textbook. Slam poetry has its roots in Chicago and was founded in the mid 1980s. This particular style of poetry has been growing in popularity ever since then with national poetry slam competitions and a hit TV show on HBO called Def Jam Poetry. The rules of a poetry slam are simple, all work must be original to the poet, no costumes or props are allowed to aid the speaker, and there is a loosely enforced 3 minutes time limit for all poems. Poems are judged by a few randomly selected audience members who rate the poems on a scale of 6-10. High energy and audience participation are strongly encouraged. The Poetry Slam competition at VC was a two night event. The first night consisted of all the poets performing, with the top scores of that night moving on to the finals the second night.

The competition was held in the VC theater and the slam’s MC, Stephanie Palmer, did a wonderful job announcing the many poets while adding a lot of personality to keep the show rolling smoothly. The first night of the competition was inspiring and full of many different flavors of poetry, ranging from serious and thoughtful to humorous and lighthearted. Some stand out poems of the first night included Ben Walker, DJ Avilucea, Heather Stephens, “Big John” Hopkins and Kenny Guertin. Many people were very pleasantly surprised to witness the high level of talent demonstrated by all the young poets. Also the rawness and honesty exhibited in many of the works gained a lot of admiration and respect from the au-continued in news...