In the bathroom at the Apollo Theater, an attendant will greet you with a bar of chocolate, and a gold toilet seat will greet you in the stall. At least, that is what slam poet Vanessa Pike-Vrtiak experienced.
Pike-Vrtiak co-founded A Reason to Listen, a Eureka-based slam poetry team, and helped open a forum in Eureka for local poets to perform.
On March 11, she will perform at the Accident Gallery in Old Town Eureka in the third of a series of four monthly competitions. The top three poets from each month will compete against each other in May. The winner of the final competition will represent Humboldt County in the Individual World Poetry Slam, the national championship of slam poetry.
The road to the Accident Gallery is not free from controversy. Pike-Vrtiak says that in slam poetry you can judge art on a comparative basis. A slam is, by definition, a competition in which poets perform, receive points and someone wins. Someone also loses.
This does not sit well with some in the poetry community.
Megan Davis, a 22-year-old “student of life” as she says it, is one of the founders of the local poetry slam scene. When she was in high school, she and her friends did workshops and performances at the local juvenile hall.
With help from her high school teacher Therese Keslin, whom she calls a “guiding light,” Davis’ senior project was to put together the first poetry slam in Eureka.
Davis opposes the point system and says, “I don’t think art can really be judged like that.”
Davis says the need for judgment is an instinct. “It’s extremely prevalent in this country to be fueled by competition,” she says. “It’s a competitive world.”
HSU art professor James Moore says the most challenging thing in teaching art is the grading, which he calls the antithesis of what art is.
Moore holds out hope for the future and for the current generation of artists he teaches. When he speaks about his students, he talks with the excitement of a parent describing his child’s first steps.
“There is an intolerance for hypocrisy and a demand for genuineness. If it means we have to reevaluate the way we judge art,” he says, “then so be it.”
In an attempt to please all parties, beginning in June of 2009, the Accident Gallery stopped hosting slams, while continuing to offer space to poets wishing to perform.
Pike-Vrtiak says, “[The competition] was ruining the venue.” But, over the seven months without a slam, she received requests to start again.
Brad Wilson, one of the core members of A Reason to Listen, is realistic about what the slam means to the community.
“We were torn for a while. People are fundamentally opposed to the competition part,” he says but concedes, “When we have a slam, more people come.” Slams began again on Jan. 14, 2010. About 80 people went to the event.
The goal of A Reason to Listen and the Accident Gallery is to offer space in the community for poets to share their experiences. There is time available at the beginning of the night to perform out of competition, but the organizers encourage everyone to participate in the slam.
Davis says the danger comes in performers tailoring their poetry to the competition. She says that the poems with political or social content tend to score better than more introspective and personal poetry.
“Sometimes the writing is compromised for the message,” she says. “I would never consider myself a slam poet. I’m a poet.”
Pike-Vrtiak recognizes the pitfalls inherent in competition but says, “If you’re a poet and you want to be recognized, you have to slam.”
The Eureka slam is a stepping stone to the Individual World Poetry Slam. Pike-Vrtiak and Davis have been there before.
In 2006, A Reason to Listen performed at the Apollo Theater in New York City.
The Apollo Theater opened in 1914 as a venue for unknown artists in Harlem. Billie Holiday, James Brown, and Lauryn Hill all got their starts at the venue. The slogan of the Apollo Theater is, “Where Stars Are Born and Legends Are Made.”
Davis calls it the highlight of her experience with slam poetry.
When it came time to perform, the team did away with the rules. Everyone got on stage together. They performed a poem conceived specifically for the occasion. It was a blend of the work they had all put in as a team.
Davis says, “It wouldn’t have been right otherwise.”
She explains the responsibility of the slam poet as the reason the team broke the rules. The performer must let go of the competition and say what needs to be said. She must speak the truth when all eyes are on her.
For Pike-Vrtiak, poetry was never about competition. It is about the love of words, a love that began when she checked out books from her elementary school library and held them to her chest in an effort to take the words straight into her heart. She wrote her first poems in the fourth grade.
Poetry means as much to her now as it did then because she writes about what is important to her. “My purpose is to share what I know with my community,” she says. “And, that’s my heart.”
Be the first to comment on this article!