National Poetry Slam champs at home base for a monthly slam

Team sports and poetry may seem mutually exclusive, but that’s not the case for SlamCharlotte, the city’s award winning poetry slam group, which picked up the National Poetry Slam Championship in Chicago in August.

It’s the group’s third win and first since 2008, making Charlotte the winningest team since the inception of the National Poetry Slam in 1990.

The finals pitted SlamCharlotte against two teams it had never bested in preliminaries – Los Angeles and reigning champs Baltimore (along with Salt Lake City). Instead of unleashing its heaviest work on the judging panel, it opted for Jordan Bailey and Jay Ward’s performance of “Happy.”

“It was a gamble that paid off,” says Slammaster Bluz, aka Boris Rogers, an internationally ranked slam poet and the team’s coach. “We’re known for doing poems that go against the grain and buck the system. Some teams follow a trend of what’s popular and what’s working. We do it when necessary, but when we have a chance to be mavericks, that’s what we do.”

A monthly slam competition is held at Spirit Square. The slam returns to Knight Gallery Friday.

“If your story and writing is compelling, if the performance is good, sometimes the judging panel won’t even matter,” says Rogers, who adds that the opposite is sometimes true. “You can do an amazing poem about how your grandmother saved your life and you later gave her a kidney and then someone else does a poem about a pine cone, and the pine cone poem beats your poem. To that judge that pine cone poem is what they needed. You don’t know which poem is going to win.”

Unlike competitions where judges are experts in the field, slam judges have little knowledge of the competitors or the craft. Some have never even witnessed a poetry slam before.

“It’s the fairest, unfair event you could ever go to,” says Rogers. “It’s fun that way. You could get a Rhodes scholar or a drunk – it’s happened. The trick is getting them to stay the whole time.”

Rogers interest in poetry began in high school in South Carolina when an English teacher challenged students to rewrite Shakespeare. He was sure his hip-hop rendering of “Romeo and Juliet” would blow her away. He got a C.

“But it forced me to look at poetry differently and re-imagine it,” he says. He delved deeper at UNC Charlotte reading sad poems at open mics after a failed long distance relationship. His poetry took a different turn after poet Jessica Care Moore spoke at at the school.

“She did some amazing work that empowered women and empowered people,” he says. “I wanted to be able to lift people up.”

Fellow poet Terry Creech introduced Rogers to the more theatrical slam style he picked up while in Texas.

“Slam upped the level of what we could do and who we could reach. It got us into the African American Culture Center and that got us a grant to work with Blumenthal, who have embraced everything we’ve ever done,” Rogers says. “There are teams that are doing everything on their own, it’s really helpful when you have a support system.”

But every poem isn’t a slam.

“You can still do solid, well written quiet poems on your own. Slam wants you to go hard and aggressive, depending on the message whether it’s funny or socially conscious or introspective,” he explains.

As coach, Rogers reads the audience.

“I follow the poems in the room that are scoring well, but if they’re all Black Lives Matter poems, the judges might be getting Black Lives Matter fatigued. Some bouts can get really heavy. No shade on the judges, they’re just tired of hearing the same message,” he says. “That’s the thing Charlotte prides itself on is giving a different message and perspective.”

SLAMCHARLOTTE POETRY SLAM

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday

This story was originally published October 17, 2018 at 5:12 PM.