#npsoak

[strengthofdoves-blog]

With Win Last Weekend, Boston Poetry Slam Team Sweeps All 3 National Titles

Poems about black lives, women's voices help Boston's House Slam team win the National Poetry Slam.

Congratulations!!!!!

[blythebaird]

what was performing at NPS like?

The National Poetry Slam was RIDICULOUS in the best way. Imagine hundreds of people you’ve spent hours ogling over on the internet running around Oakland and raising hell. People having cypher circles and spitting brand new work on street corners and in hotel rooms and in elevators and concrete stairwells. Sneaking into the hotel pool after hours. Smoking apple pipes in front of the lobby. Playing cards and telling stories in the courtyard. Cheering on your hometown slam while repping your new city. Getting life advice from slam legends. Making friends you might never see again, but shit, going all in anyways. Finding love everywhere you look for it. Magic. Magic. Magic.

Performing at NPS is like having an out of body experience. All the venues have this brilliant underground part-of-something-big vibe. The whole room goes silent for your poem, but then when you start, the ooooh’s and the ahhhhh’s and the snaps and the GET IT GURL’s and the GO IN POET’s and the OH SHIT’s and the snaps and the hmm’s and the thunderous applause. People from across the country and poets you’ve looked up to since high school cheering for you and your team and every performer to hit the stage that night (except for predators, who get hissed as they deserve) because we are all on team clap for everybody. And when you walk off stage, you feel like an actual sparkle because you are in Oakland, California at the National Poetry Slam and everyone is so fucking kind. 

[ashleyaugust]

Back in NY a few days now and lawd the reflections! California, The National Poetry Slam, poet people, you treated us so damn well! I can now call some of the most wondrous humans, friends. Team, I love y'all, couldn't picture a group of folk who I'd rather cackle, cry & rock out on a stage with this summer. Coach, thank you for loving on us and keeping us, your level, popping. Coming in, 'bout 10 out of 72/Le Nation ain't too bad ;) So much good. So, so much God. #NPSoak #TeamNoName #LettheChurchSaySquad #TeamEboni #WeGonBeAlright

[jivepoetic]

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For this #Oakland #npsOAK #nps2015 #AfterParty #party to happen I had to rip open an #album cover, snatch out the liner notes, & make #DIY #slipmats because the club ain't have none. #djlife #djproblems #IshowsUp #iGetsTheJobDone #DJ #Turntables #vinyl #Serato #ActLikeYou

[fuckyeahpoetryslam]

Melissa Lozada-Oliva - "Like Totally Whatever" (NPS 2015)

[lumplestiltzken]

My Unsolicited Opinion of the Week (The NPSOak Edition)

I’ve just returned from Oakland, CA and this year’s installment of the National Poetry Slam. The week was...great in all the ways that Nats is usually great, awful in the ways that Nats is usually awful, and I walked away with some generally mixed feelings about the whole experience. A few firsts (for me) this year: After missing qualifying for semifinals (by three tenths or five tenths of a point, depending on how mad at myself I want to be), I was able to sacrifice for one of the semifinal bouts; I spent a great deal of time in conversation with some folks for Colorado; and I got hissed at mid-performance. Woo.

Let me say first that one of the things that I absolutely love about poetry slam, is the audience’s ability to have visceral, vocal responses to a poem and its performance, in real time. For me, those responses are generally positive, due in large part I’m sure to “growing up” in the slam family of North Carolina (and in a large slam context, the SoFried regional), where, we are above all else, supportive of the poet on stage. We clap; we cheer; we hold our breath; we hold our disagreements ‘til the end of the night and talk about those things outside. In short: we do not hiss.

I met the aforementioned Colorado poets in a pizza shop after both of our bouts Wednesday night. One of them (whom I’ll call Frank because I am horrible with names), was particularly heartbroken because he had been hissed during his performance that evening. The poem was about his experience of growing up in a home where he was made to feel unsafe if ever he questioned his or his father’s white, male, cis, straight privilege to his family until he adopted some pretty racist, sexist, homophobic ideals of his own, and what the work of unlearning those things has been like. There’s a line in the poem that begins, “the first time I used the word ‘faggot’…” which met with immediate hissing from other poets in the bout, with no regard for the work that the poem is trying to do. My offense? Using the word “whore” in a line that gives the definition of the word “whore.”

Now. I’m very aware that both of those words bring with them a pretty intense history of homophobia and slut-shaming and violence that are by no means excusable just because they were offered up in a poem. I am really not here for a discussion about who can use what words when and with whom. But, I seriously question the intent behind hissing at a poet during a poem, if not just for increasing language/behavior policing by the PSI “in-crowd” under the guise of maintaining safe space that I’ve seen at Nationals over the years.

Frank had no idea why he was being hissed at until he and I talked through the poem at the pizza place. What he did know...that he was doing a poem about what happens to boys who are silenced about their privilege at an early age, and was effectively told by the other poets in the room that he needed to shut up about it. As for me, only one poet in the room made an attempt to explain to me why she was offended by my use of the word….on twitter….the day after the bout...after I made a contribution to #npsshade. And while I definitely appreciate her coming to me, how much more powerful could that conversation have been if it didn’t come on the heels of being made to feel like I needed to defend myself?

All of that to say: for all of its proclamation that the “point is the poetry,” I’m more convinced every year that the real point, is to talk for three minutes without saying anything that the “poetry faves” deem troublesome...that is, if they give you the benefit of actually listening to your piece in the first place. Can we investigate a slam schedule in which, SoFried comes after Nats? I need some TLC from my slam family after spending all this time in the slam community.

[nico-nico-suavecito]

Hey ya’ll! My coach Susan took this video of me performing at the Rookie Open Mic at NPS. I had a lil hiccup in there, but I think it came out pretty well. 

Check it out?

[ashleyaugust]

Sorry we had to put it on you like this. #NPSoak #TeamNoName