Slam poet

A poetry slam is a competition at which poets read or recite original work. Poetry slam began in Chicago in 1984 with its first competition designed to move poetry recitals from academia to a popular audience when American poet Marc Smith began experimenting with open microphone performance venues for poetry. The performances at poetry slam are judged by a panel of judges, typically five, and usually selected from the audience, or sometimes judged by audience response. The judges usually give each poem a score on a scale of 0–10 (zero being the worst, ten being the best). The highest and lowest scores are dropped and the middle three are kept. The highest score one can receive is a 30 and the lowest is a zero.

American poet Marc Smith is credited with starting the poetry slam at the Get Me High Lounge in Chicago in November 1984. In July 1986, the original slam moved to its permanent home, the Green Mill Jazz Club. In 1987 the Ann Arbor Poetry Slam was founded by Vince Keuter and eventually made its home at the Heidelberg (moving later 2010, 2013, and 2015 to its new home at Espresso Royale). In August 1988, the first poetry slam held in New York City was hosted by Bob Holman at the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe. In 1990, the first National Poetry Slam took place at Fort Mason, San Francisco. This slam included teams from Chicago and San Francisco, and an individual poet from New York. Soon afterward, poetry slam increased popularity allowed some poets to make full-time careers in performance and competition, touring the United States and eventually the world.

In 2001, the grounding of aircraft following the September 11 attacks left a number of performers stranded in cities they had been performing in. After the attacks, a new wave of poetry slam started within New York City with a community focus on poets coming together to speak about the terrorist attacks.

As of 2014^[update], the National Poetry Slam featured 72 certified teams, culminating in five days of competition.

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