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The dimly lit room was packed as nearly 70 people waited for the final round of the poetry slam to begin. The competition started with 11 local poets, now whittled to three.
Members of the audience stomped their feet in sync as the night’s emcee announced the poets performing in the final round.
The first poet took the stage and started to read.
MO Poetry Slam Springfield hosts monthly poetry slam sessions at the Skinny Improv. January’s slam, open to women only, doubled as a qualifier for the international Women of the World Poetry Slam in March in Austin, Texas.
The Jan. 16 slam featured poetry covering a slew of uncensored topics, including euthanasia, infidelity, love, suicide, gender identity issues, addictions, sex and religion. In poetry slam-style, poets were theatrical and read with passion. A few poets had tears come to their eyes as they presented their pieces.
The final round was no exception. As the poems were read, members of the audience snapped their fingers, a sign that they liked what was being said.
After the highest and lowest scores were dropped, the three poet finalists each received a perfect score, a first for MO Poetry, said emcee Michelle Nimmo. The winner was decided by the cumulative score from all four rounds.
Melina (who goes by a single name), was elated after she was named the winner.
“I actually figured I wouldn’t win, so I wasn’t as nervous as I have been in other times, but right now I am,” she said.
Her winning poem asked the question, “Do you trust the government?”
“Do you trust the TSA? Do you trust the guy saying 4 ounces of toothpaste is a national security matter? Do you trust him to make real decisions or do you just hope he knows the shape of a gun in case that comes up?,” Melina recited as part of her poem. “Quick, freedom or safety, which do you pick?”
In March she will represent MO Poetry Slam in the Women of the World Poetry Slam, competing against 72 other female poets from around the world.
“If I do a good job, I’ll be happy with it,” she said.
Springfield has a unique poetry community, said Nimmo. In many cities, male poets dominate, but Springfield is “estrogen heavy.” The city is also more polite when it comes to listening to poetry, applauding after each poem. During January’s slam, the only booing heard was at the judges when they awarded a low score.
The heart of the slam — the poetry — differs from poet to poet.
“You can hear a Christian-themed poem and then you could hear something raunchy. That’s the great thing about poetry slam I think, you have three minutes to say whatever you like,” Nimmo said. “You get tons of varying perspectives. Especially here in Springfield.”
MO Poetry slammaster Seth White described a poetry slam as, “a raucously, entertaining, heart-touching, mind-expanding, intellectual, emotional, audience participation event.” A poetry slam is “poetry for the people, less traditional and much more entertaining,” he said.
He agreed with Nimmo that the poetry is different with each poet, but there is one common goal: “Can you connect with the audience?”
Brittany Paige, a judge at the January qualifying event, said she was deeply moved listening to the poetry. It was her first time attending a slam.
“I thought it was awesome, the power behind it,” Paige said. “The fact that all these women were so brave to get up and share all these well-put thoughts. It was just this great feeling of empowerment.”
She said she judged the poetry on how she could relate to it and how well the poets recited the poems.
Audience members who attend poetry slams for the first time and who do not know the presenting poets are asked to be judges. Nimmo said that’s because they have “fresh ears ... so they don’t know what they should be hearing.”
Ginny Law has been a performer in two poetry slams, most recently in the Women of the World qualifier slam.
Law was knocked out in the first round, less than two points behind the cut-off.
She writes poetry about experiences at work, love and women’s rights, or “whatever hits me,” she said. “ I have to feel it.”
Within the MO Poetry Slam community, Law said she has found “more than friends, they are family.”
Melina said she will write more poetry in preparation for the Women of the World Poetry Slam that starts March 20 in Austin. But she will also bring pieces she presented in Springfield.
She said she gets inspiration for her poetry from “just everywhere. A lot of times it’s just a word or a phrase that distracts me from my work or something and I just go off it.”
This will be her first time representing MO Poetry Slam Springfield at a big event. She said both Nimmo and White have been great coaches and she plans to work with them in preparation for the March tournament.
Poetry slams started in Chicago in the 1980s and branched out across the country since then, White said. About 10 years ago, Poetry Slam Inc., which also hosts the National Poetry Slam and Individual World Poetry Slam, started the Women of the World Poetry Slam.
“They noticed at the individual (poetry slam) that they weren’t getting a lot of women participants,” White said. “Were women feeling left out?”
Nimmo, who has represented MO Poetry five times at the Women of the World Poetry Slam, said the goal of the slam is to “encourage as many women poets to participate as possible.”
The $5 cover charge at the Springfield slam went toward Melina’s registration costs. MO Poetry will also host fundraiser events to help offset Melina’s travel and lodging costs, White said.
Melina said MO Poetry is “a really welcoming and encouraging community. The people that have been doing poetry with me and me with them for so long, they’re just people I didn’t know before, but now they’re really good friends.”
She said she hopes more people become involved in MO Poetry: “I love it when there are new voices and different types of things we haven’t heard before.”
What: Monthly MO Poetry Slam, open to all poets reading original poetry. Sign-up starts 30 minutes before the slam.
Where: The Skinny Improv, 308 South Ave.
When: 7:30 p.m., Feb. 20 (and every third Thursday)
Cost: $5 for performers, audience members
A poetry slam is an event where poets read original poetry and are judged on a scale from 1 to 10.
Slams are separated into rounds and can have up to 12 poets. The person, or persons, with the lowest score, or scores, are eliminated at the end of each round.
Five judges are picked from the audience the night of the event. They are not allowed to know the competitors and have often never attended a slam poetry event before. The highest score and lowest score from the judges are nixed to make the performer’s score out of 30 points.
Poems can be any style and can be on any subject, but they must be original. No props or costumes are allowed. Poets can either memorize their poem or read it.
A three-minute time limit is enforced. There is a 10-second grace period, but after that is exceeded, points are deducted.
The winner is the poet with the highest score in the final round, or in the case of a tie, his or her cumulative score.
— Information from MO Poetry Slam Springfield’s website
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