No costumes, props or music are allowed, except for the sounds you can make with your body. Only a poet and a microphone occupy the stage for three minutes.
These are some of the rules of slam poetry, a spoken-word performance competition in which audience members are chosen at random to judge.
Austin Poetry Slam, a not-for-profit organization that has been promoting performance art for the past 20 years, hosts a weekly contest at the Spiderhouse Ballroom near West Campus. Approximately a dozen poets perform each week in front of about 180 audience members. The $5 cover charge attendees pay helps fund travel for local poets who compete throughout the U.S. APS also gives away $100 in prize money weekly to slam winners.
Danny Strack, APS slam master and executive director, said Austin poets are regulars every year at the National Poetry Slam competition, which is a team contest.
“My favorite thing about slam poetry is how freeing it is as a form,” Strack said. “A lot of people hear the word ‘poetry’ and then get turned off. They think of form poetry. They think of sonnets and quatrains and haiku and things that are very rigid where you have to write in a certain way. Slam poetry is just you and your words and a microphone. That’s it. … It gives you the opportunity to say anything in a supportive and uncensored environment.”
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