hittin the books: The Cultural Politics of Slam Poetry

I grabbed the book, The Cultural Politics of Slam Poetry: Race, Identity, and the Performance of Popular Verse in America by Susan B. A. Somers-Willett, off the poetry shelf at Borders a little over a week after I didn’t make it on the DC Slam Team. I had been upset that night, less so about not making the team. It was more about the split second I felt apologetic, almost ashamed of my poems. It was as if fate directed me to this book, as a way to perhaps explain and expound the dynamics of identity and slam poetry, and help me understand my own feelings.

Slam Poetry began in 1986, when Marc Smith, a white, working class man from Chicago, stumbled upon its structure—a competition between poets, with the audience judging the poems and the performance with numeric scores. (Let’s be clear that slam poetry does not have roots in hip hop, though hip hop is certainly a huge factor and influence on slam poets.) In theory, it increases the accessibility of verse, and allows anyone to determine the worth of a poem. The critical seat of power is put in the hands of an audience, instead of being relegated to the elite few (what has predominantly been academics and critics) (pg. 4-5). This was definitely a factor that attracted me to slam poetry. As well as its “challenge to the relative lack of diversity… represented in the academy, the canon, and dominant culture” (pg. 7). I would like to think that slam poetry is part of a social movement; “slams are culture; they are places where interracial exchanges are made and marginalized identities are invented, reflected, affirmed, and refigured” (pg. 9), and therefore, has cultural and political ramifications.

Because slams are places where identities are expressed, often marginalized voices, then the identities expressed by slam poets, both through visible markers, and the content of their poems, are “performative—that is, they are performed consciously or unconsciously for audiences to certain ends” (pg. 8). They are “cultural stages” where the audience confirms or denies the poets performance as “authentic” via scoring (pg. 8). In other words, in order to be successful in a slam, the poet has to convince the audience of the authenticity of one’s identity (pg. 71) as a person of color, as a woman, as queer-identified, etc. Of course, the notion of authenticity is tricky and dangerous; it is socially constructed and is a consequence of “culturally sanctioned performances over time” (pg. 70). It is also problematic in the sense that we assume there is an “original or essential self that one can perfectly emulate” (pg. 73) in a performance.

Nevertheless, there are “identity” poems in a slam poet’s repertoire in which one performs specific aspects of identity. It is a proclamation of self, a confession of a lived experience. And to reward such proclamations, and deem it authentic, the judges cough up scores, and the audience applauds, get on their feet, or boo.

Now to tie it back to my feelings of apology and shame. Perhaps the “phenomenon of authentic identity as a criterion for success” (Pg. 79) was at play that night. The judges, through my low scores, did not deem me “authentic” to my embodied identities as an Asian American woman, a person of color. Somewhere in my subconscious I must’ve realized that. As much as one repeats to oneself that you don’t need validation by others to be you or to be real, the dynamic between you, as a poet, and the audience is undeniable. So you step up on that stage, hoping for validation of not just your talent, but your lived experiences. When it’s not rewarded by praises or high scores, when it’s not authenticated by the judges and audience, you can’t help but question yourself and the value of your experiences. You expect to make a connection to the audience, based on a shared value of difference (pg. 9-10).

But who is this audience? Somers-Willet specifically talks about the audience at National Poetry Slams, which is majority white, and also argues that African American poets are the most rewarded on a national level. She discusses performance of blackface, and the fascination with and pleasure of a white audience at the performance of Blackness. She also argues that if predominantly white audiences are judging slams, then “the strong advocacy of black identity may be one of the factors that they further reward precisely because black identity is so often portrayed in American culture as the most marginalized compared to a central white identity” (pg. 83).

What about local slam venues, and especially the ones in DC? What is the dynamic between a predominantly Black audience and an Asian American female poet? If I was expecting to make a connection to the audience based on a shared value of difference (which I was), which “identity” poems would be most successful? My highest scoring piece was “Things I never want to hear again about race and racism”. It was written from the persona of a person of color, but still clearly from the perspective of an Asian American person. It also is a parody, and I realized now, has one of the aesthetics of a slam poem: the “let me break it down for you” moment of truth and/or epiphany. While this identity, as a person of color was affirmed, my other poems, ones rooted in my identity as a Filipino woman, were not as “rewarded”.

Of course, you cannot extract from the equation how well written a poem is and how well it is performed. I know that I only performed well during the first round, and my second round piece was not polished enough. But it is interesting to look at the experience through this lens, no? It certainly brings up a lot of questions, especially regarding the dynamics between poets and audiences of color, and how can one not exploit one’s identity for a score.