The Home Team Won

I watched the National Poetry Slam online tonight (thank you for whoever in NPS organized that!) and was quite underwhelmed by the quality of work being performed.

Sixteen poems were presented and about four of them moved me. There was only one funny poem all night that the judges loved, probably because they were starving for funny after being bombarded with safe poem after safe poem about serious issues.

I do congratulate the Soapboxing team from St. Paul, who earned their win. The judging I thought was consistent. I was quite relieved not to see much score creep and no high scores were given simply for a poet walking up on stage.

The representative of the St. Paul Mayor's office, I forget the dweebs name, in his opening remarks gave mad love to the St. Paul team, while barely giving mention to the other teams from New York, Austin and Durham. Not cool to do that. I understand many poets from the other teams protested and for the night the teams were not identified by their cities, but given letters, ie. A, B...

The team from Austin did three team pieces in a four round slam and one of their poets was in a see through outfit during a poem about sex trafficking - which was mentioned quite often in the chat rooms and twittersphere. What was going on there?

St. Paul, again, earned it with a solid performance by Sierra DeMulder and one of my favorite pieces of the night was a slave marriage poem done by If 6 was 9. He did that one at IWPS last year.

Hard to compare this with the few slam finals I've seen but geez, WoW was so much better and passionate.

If anything, tonight's dull and safe slam has given me confidence. I've competed with a few of these poets, and gotten my ass deservedly beaten. It gives me inspiration that I can improve as a writer.