Happy Birthday, Capital Slam!
Now Playing: Coffee, Dead can Dance, light rain
Topic: slam
Friday night was the first anniversary and the official opening bash for Capital Slam. It's astounding, heartening, and possibly just a little intimidating that a series that started just a year ago can pack a pub the size of the Gap of Dunloe on Bank so full that latecomers were stuck standing at the back by the merch table. On a Friday night. On Bank Street. An entire pub, packed to capacity, tuned in on a stage with a poet on it. It's a surprising achievement.

One of the great advantages of having the place packed was that by the time I got there, ten minutes before the show, there were no unoccupied tables. So you have to pick a table and sit at it, and you have a chance to meet people you might not otherwise have spoken to. And everyone had come out of the woodwork - with university back in session, and the fall season in full swing, there was a real sense of "hooray, slam's back!" Luckily, with the usual crowd of regulars at Capital Slam, your randomly selected tablemates are usually friendly. I was glad to get a chance to finally meet both Matt Peake and Owen Hewitt, who were both on the 2004 competitive team, and to talk to Eric Rosenhek, who hosts the Thursday Special Blend on CKCUfm.

For anyone who hasn't been to a poetry slam - these events are astounding. At least, I usually find them astounding. For one thing, having survived high school poetry class where they did their best to grind poetry into a dry, dusty pulp that sticks to the roof of the mouth, it's wonderful to see people - quite a few of them still in high school - having so much fun with it.

And it's fun poetry - not always technically interesting, but usually exciting. The slam works like this: there's an open mike with a handful of poets who want to read but not compete. Then there might be a featured reader, and a break, and then the slam, in which the poets who want to compete get up and have three minutes to strut their stuff. The time limit and the competitive spirit call for poems that are punchy, emotional, often incendiary or sexy or funny or all three at once if you can handle it. The judges have to be swayed to the high score, and generally the more fun they have the better. (Downers often don't score well, as Owen Hewitt found out in round one with his wake/elegy to his cousin Sandy.) Then there's a break, and maybe a second feature, and then the top-scoring five poets duke it out with a second poem. Then the prizes are handed out, everyone grabs a last pint, and the show's over.

This evening's first feature was a poet called Katalyst, a member of the Kalmunity Vibe Collective, a group of artists creating "live organic improv" in Montreal (they look really interesting). She brought along a trumpet player, Jason "Blackbird" Selman, and as far as I can tell, most of their set was, if not completely improvised, then formed and framed on stage. I think that the most improv part was the more 'talky' segments between poems, but even those were rhythmic and aware of the sound. The connection between music and poetry is made absolutely clear when you bring a musician up there to perform, and Katalyst and Blackbird did some really neat trading off of rhythms, picking up on each other and doing counterpoints. It starts really bringing home that parallel I thought of when I first discovered slam, between spoken word poetry and jazz. (I also really enjoyed the spoken piece that Blackbird performed - a very angry poem spoken in a voice like a quiet grave.)

The slam was as fun as ever - a lot of new poets who hadn't been up before. Like I said, often slam poetry isn't technically interesting, and falls more into the category of dramatic monologue - which isn't a negative observation, by the way. And sometimes the technical stuff is so intricate and speeds by so fast that you wish you could learn to listen faster. The slam had the usual wild range of styles, from Steve Sauve's humourous monologues to a classically hip-hop piece by Toronto's Tommy Buick, to Ritallin's rhythmic virtuosity (is that an unspoken samba beat he's usually got playing under the words?) and Owen Hewitt's toast to his cousin. I think the nicest surprise was Jim Thomas, a poet from the UK who's apparently going to be moving to Ottawa this winter - keep an eye out for him. Big guy, looks just a little like Tim Currie, British accent. Going to be a really interesting new voice in the mix - I loved his piece in which he confessed that he was an (insert deep and ominous voice here) android - and has apparently been hosting slams in Oxford with a group called Hammer and Tongues, who look a little like the Ottawa crowd.

The second feature of the night was Brendan McLeod, from Vancouver, who was a lot of fun. Definitely a contrast to Katalyst, in that he wasn't as much focussed on rhythm and more on surprising images and impact of his performance; he bent his voice and gestured and moved around the stage and ranted and speedtalked, and got wholly wrapped up in passionate delivery. (In particular, I couldn't tell if he really got choked up at the end of his furious poem about high school shootings, but the emotion in his voice certainly locked me in.)

And then there was the final slam - in which I was pretty happy to see the top marks taken by Festrell, a young and original writer. I've known her for a year or so, and both her writing and her presence in the scene have just been skyrocketing. Her performances are usually much quieter than most of the others, and yet when she started her first poem, the whole bar shut up to listen. It was eerie. Festrell also runs Nekusis Press and co-runs the Ravenswing Craft and Zine Fair.

And after that there was nothing for it but to eat the last of the delicious Capital Slam birthday cake, and start slowly trickling out (when I left around 1:00 a small core of the Capital Slam collective was still in the corner with a pitcher... but I had a bus to catch.)

If, on a Friday night, you see a huge crowd of people spilled out onto the sidewalk outside the Gap of Dunloe, rivalling the crowds standing outside Barrymore's Music Hall, then it's probably Capital Slam between rounds. Walk in, grab a drink, and find a seat. You won't regret it.