Louder Than Life

This week’s blog will be a bit different. Okay, so maybe I am buying time to wait on more of your submissions. But really, I want to tell you all what can happen when you do what you love.

I thought I had thrown in the towel.

Slam poetry (competition poetry) to me, had become overrated and all the poets I would ever listen to seemingly spit (did poetry) just for the audience. More than enough simply wrote in metaphors, or punch lines. It was better the audience whooped and hollered for your last hot line and miss the next whole stanza, then for silence to blanket the room. Being on the stage, you really never know what is taken place below, unless you happen to make eye contact with the nearest onlooker. Catching the travel of a tear down the dimple of anyone’s cheek, and you would have shoulders like a football players shoulder pads. It would never matter again what any poet did as long as you knew you were true to your art. And that’s what it had come down to for me.

So, here I was competing yet again to make it to the finals stage to get a chance to attend the prestigious annual Brave New Voices (BNV) International Youth Poetry Slam 2008 hosted by Youth Speaks (http://youthspeaks.org/). This was my last shot. And here I had said I was through, I guess I should tell you why. I lost the first preliminary bout held, to compete to get to the Louder than Life finals stage (LTL, like many other cities is a qualifying poetry slam used to help select the representative team of a city at BNV). My loss was a major blow to my confidence, in a sense I had lost to a rookie. But, because competition was never something I liked to maximize over the purity of a poem, I was forced to come to terms with my lack of preparation for this slam. A prideful part of me seems to have thought I had it in the bag because I had done this before. I’ve slammed and performed so many times I don’t have a number. I didn’t bounce back as easily as I wanted to, I marked it off as my just not being a slam poet. I said, I would just stick to open mics and random performances to open shows and the like—I would shop around my CD and poetry book, sell my poetry as best an open mic could and I would be happy. But the competition was calling my spirit. I knew I had something to say, even though I had no clue exactly what I would said, poems show their faces as often as Jehovah’s Witnesses, only not as predictable. The competition would be in Washington D.C. this year, and I had been meaning to brush up on my travel. What better way to do it then mix one of my primary passions (poetry) and my desire to see the world.

The last preliminary bout came and went like a blur. I spit with my soul and won second place amongst some of the best youth poets in the city. My Co-founder and best friend Jasmine “SwEEt VenoM” Bailey was even my competition during the first preliminary bout, and will be my competition on the finals stage. We’re connected at the mic (how I love the wordage of poets) as she says so when it comes down to it, we would be happy for one another if one of us didn’t make it. As the scores were being tallied, I tried to play it cool, prepared myself for a win, while preparing myself for a loss. They called us by our stage names from highest place to the lowest place. Lowest containing three winners apart from the original two, I was second place and realized after it marinated. I won whether or not a third poet was chosen, and if I hadn’t competed I would have missed my spot.

As finals approaches, I’m steady trying to memorize my poetry, getting my hand gestures together, figuring out what I’ll emphasize and how, and experimenting with some new styles. It’ll be a hot and heavy slam, HBO will also be present to film us going at it—poet for poet, word for word, performance for performance, creativity for creativity. Come out and support the youth and be apart of this South Florida history.

See the flyer below:



Also this just in, ( I've always wanted to say that) SwEEt Venom, my co-founder for Unadulterated Poets and I were on Mecca Loungue Radio Show, to promote our club and poetry, check it out. I'll post the embedded link here and if that fails the url is on the left side tool bar under: Want to Hear Poetry?



Thank you again,

Peace