Bob, do you remember your first slam you’ve organized in NYC?

Yes, the first night at the Nuyorican, the first poetry slam I remember… Paul Badey was in the very first poetry slam and so was Jim Brody, a magnificent poet, second generation New York school hung around the St. Mark’s poetry project, hung around in Woodstock with “The Band” and at this point in his life was homeless, and living at the Nuyorican. He was one of the first people to just crash there when he had to. So Jim was there and I remember Steven Cannon one of the first judges was there.

Everybody scored a one, he gave every poem a one. I said “Hey Steve, you got it backwards. A 10 is high and a 0 is low. And he said “I don’t care, they’re all number one with me! And so they’re all going to get a number 1!” So that was the originating spirit and Paul Badey won the first slam. He also won the first crown for being the first champion for the Nuyorican. And at that point we did it right: He had to put on a crown! We had an actual crown and a cape. I was into the whole theater thing… he was totally embarrassed. As a matter of fact, next time he tried to lose. He tried his best to lose. He flew in a little haiku to shake things up so he wouldn’t have to win this thing, but of course the haiku got the greatest score of the night! And you know, he proved again, if it’s the right timing and the place and you do it, you can’t lose. It’s going to work! It works! And Paul was a brilliant, brilliant poet.

How has poetry changed over the years?

Where we are now is with the ultimate goal of being on Def Poetry Jam so you can be on TV, and I don’t blame you. That’s where you can talk to people these days. Although there is something to be said for the live poetry reading before an audience of twenty people or even a hundred people. And the meaningfulness is not in the mass distribution, but in the way that with twenty people the epic can be tailored to each of them. It’s that personal interest that you want to have, that you want to find with your people in your audience so that your words can mean and be part of a conversation. Because a poem isn’t written until you read it, until you hear it, until the reader or the listener or viewer completes it with that other apparatus, the ear, or the eye. Or the marriage of the ear and the eye.

I want to just say this: The way that poetry has changed does not seem to me to be any different from the way that poetry was changing before centuries… I mean, there is the ever-present evolution to now, which is always now. And you say “oh, it’s brand new, we’ve now got the performance going on” and you say “I’m sorry, but before there were books, there was performance” and we now finally made it back to the beginning except now it’s secondary orality and we do have it written down so we have to be post post all this theoretical…and that’s what the slam kind of wants to get away from, so here I am yammering about it all. But what has changed is the way that when I was coming up and you talked about a younger poet you were talking about someone who might win the Yale younger poets prize, which goes to the best manuscript submitted by a poet under 40. And now, when you say “a younger poet” they are usually fifteen. And that is a wonderful, wonderful change. To let the whole population in on the great secret that they are poets.

What is a misconception about slam?

I think so many people think that the slam poets are slam poets because they get up there and just make it up. It’s hilarious. It’s like you’re five years old and watching a movie and saying „wow, those people are walking around saying really stupid or marvellous things“. These poems are so worked on and carved!

One last question Mr. Holman. Is there anything we missed talking about that should be said about slam?

Yeah, there is. Poetry slam changed my life. And it’s changed a lot of people’s lives. And when you look at it through a poetry lense, maybe that’s the greatest accomplishment. Or, for Mark (Smith) the greatest accomplishment is this community of people who were living just across the hill from each other but who never got to know each other because their kind of poetry didn’t circulate in the order of the poets who were on the university structure. But I think what really isn’t talked about is how critical the slam really is for US culture in general. There is no more energetic grass roots arts movement in this country - and I think we can even talk about it globally – than the poetry slam.

Poetry slam is in itself an oxymoron, right? Poetry does not slam. Poetry does a million things but one thing it doesn’t do is that kind of (claps hands) effective cut-off point that is a slam. The negative nature of ‘slam’ is the opposite of the utopian construct, it is a poem. That I am actually going to say something that you are going to understand. And fully! You have to be me to do that. Wrong! It’s just a poem. But the slam takes on the American traditions, the US traditions of vaudeville and popular start. What in the US is dada? It picks up from Pigmeat Markum and from Lord Buckley and these word artists who are comics. Mums Maibly, Linny Bruce, they are thought of as comics who are really… poets! Because they couldn’t be poets because poetry was owned by something else and it was considered a high art. And here is an art for the people. Here is the fact that when you have something to say - when your friend’s mother has died or when you have to leave your girlfriend to go into the service, when you have to say it, you’re going to write a poem about it. And while you are writing that poem, you’re a poet. Now, the other part about “are you a poet all the time?” is another subject. But the fact is that everybody has done that. So everybody has tasted this and everybody uses these words all the time, which is all we’ve got to really touch each other with. And it’s the poetry slam in all of its peacock buffoonery, in all of its noise and clanger that is letting us know that in the middle of every word there is the truth.