Wordsmiths are being challenged to write ordinary odes for another Powell River Poetry Slam on Saturday, May 6, at Cranberry Community Hall.
“For the upcoming slam, we’re doing a theme called Ordinary Odes,” said Powell River Public Library teen services coordinator Megan Cole. “It’s based on Pablo Neruda’s odes, where he wrote about the onion, odes about socks and odes about spoons. So we’re challenging slam poets to make the ordinary, extraordinary.”
Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. His odes give a sense of how much more interesting ordinary things can become when elevated poetically.
Organizers are not expecting to discover the next Neruda, nor is slam everyone’s cup of tea, according to Cole.
“It’s like every kind of art,” said Cole. “Not all art is for everyone and some people really enjoy it and other people think it’s just too out there.”
A slam poem is a spoken-word live performance. It is sometimes referred to as “spitting fire” and often contains influences from contemporary rap and hip-hop in it’s rhyming and meter, but can also take the form and function of formal poetry.
The slam is hosted by the library and Powell River Slam Committee.
“Just having it regularly twice a year, it’s slowly building an audience and people are more and more comfortable with being in front of a crowd and giving it a try,” said Cole.
The first time he read at the Powell River slam, local singer/songwriter Scott Ritter said he had a great time, despite not considering himself a poet.
“The theme was the Dead Poet’s Society,” said Ritter. “You had to read two poems by dead poets and then you had to have an original one. That was kind of a good way in for me because there was no way I was going to write three poems for it.”
The same rules apply for the latest slam. Each poet is to have three poems ready that are under three minutes each and not necessarily memorized. Props and musical instruments are allowed. At one slam, a poet used an accordion for accompaniment.
“There is a certain competitive quality to it,” said Ritter. “It’s very flexible, a lot of fun and the audience is there, and they know just about everybody who is participating. It’s quite an energetic event. I had never been to a poetry slam before I started going a couple of years ago; I was blown away.”
Poets are judged by members of the audience and the top three are awarded cash prizes.
“The more people who come, the bigger the pot,” said Cole.
Aspiring and veteran slam poets can register by emailing [email protected], or by signing up at the event between 6:15-6:45 pm.
