Youth flock to bust rhymes at poetry slams across the country
Published Thursday November 6th, 2008
TORONTO - Once a month, in cities across the country, the atmosphere is electric as crowds of smooth-talking kids converge for a battle of words and ideas and beat.
Modern-day bards, these wordsmiths emerge from dens, bedrooms and back seats of buses to weave stories, sling sounds and make meaning for thirsty ears.
Busting rhymes one by one, they let loose with verses about body image, racism, bullying and coming out of the closet, along with satire on nosepickers, hatred for Santa and made-up languages from childhood.
Three rounds later, after heckles, hollers, laughter and even tears, one spoken word artist will win bragging rights as victor of the poetry slam.
"I don't know why I do it, I guess I just like it," says 21-year-old Kolby Seifried, a.k.a. Made Wade, who began writing rhymes in his hometown of London, Ont., at age 13.
"This is just what I do all the time, I'm always practising. I lose sleep, and it's all just words in my head. I don't even write it down anymore, it's all repetition. I just go where my mind takes me - it's all just creativity, flowing off the top of my head."
Rapping about his fantastical encounter with a genie with attitude, Seifried was recently crowned winner of the monthly Toronto Poetry Slam, giving him automatic berth into the city's semi-finals in the spring.
A slam is a friendly competition where poets performing spoken word pieces are timed, scored by impartial audience judges and slowly weeded out through several rounds.
It's coming out on top in the finals that poets really covet: those winners form a team representing their city and head to national and international competitions.
This year, the Canadian National Slam kicked off Wednesday at the Calgary International Spoken Word Festival. Twelve teams, hailing from places including Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, southern Ontario, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Victoria, will vie to be named slayers of the stage on Saturday.
"It's a forum to say anything you want to say," says Arianna Pozzuoli, 28, who is representing Toronto at this year's championship.
"Young adults, people like myself, and kids in their early 20s, teenagers ... We just cannot stop talking. We love talking about things, talking about ourselves. We're a generation that does not like to keep quiet."
Last year, some 3,500 people attended Calgary's festival, and thousands others jammed similar fests in Montreal and Toronto. Meanwhile, youth in increasing numbers are filling club basements and community centres to drop lyrics.
"A poetry slam lets people hear really mentally nourishing ideas wrapped in an entertaining gauze that is fascinating," says David Silverberg, the mastermind behind Toronto's popular monthly slams since 2005.
"It finally gives people something fun to do on a Saturday night and not feel guilty about what they're doing, either. They're able to see poetry performed in a very dynamic way."
But spoken word wasn't always celebrated. When Sheri-D Wilson would take the stage 25 years ago - just as the art form was just getting off the ground - she frequently met resistance.
"I was actually fearing for my life, because poetry was not accepted at that time," says Wilson, producer of the Calgary festival.
"The people that worked in this field to make it possible for these young kids to slam are the ones that had beers thrown at them in punk clubs."
Of course, Wilson used to heave the bottles right back.
After a while, she said, audiences even started to enjoy performances. With that turnaround, slams eventually took root in Vancouver, moving in from the U.S., and eventually spread across Canada and the globe.
"All the young slammers are aware of how our world is screwed up," Wilson says. "And that's what they talk about. And they're figuring out ways to bring a transformation so that the world doesn't have to stay stuck there."
Pozzuoli, along with Silverberg and others, has been working to get spoken word into schools.
"It scares me when a kid doesn't talk," she says. "The most important thing while you're a teenager is to talk, no matter what it is, because eventually anything that you bottle up, whatever it is, stays in your life."
Becoming part of the scene does take a little bit of digging, admits Silverberg.
"Talk to other poets, find out the open mics in the area and just get out there, because it's not going to find you, you have to find spoken word."
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