Slam Poetry and slam poetry contests. No doubt you've heard of them or seen one before, perhaps at the insistence of a friend or family member who absolutely loved it. I can't say I've seen a real poetry slam live, but I have seen slam poets live in my school and I already have quite the strong opinion on it.
It's all the same trite, unoriginal nonsense. I can find nothing insightful about regurgitating the same message, most often of social justice and inequality in life, over and over while attempting to make it rhyme, speaking quickly and sometimes taking awkward pauses. At the end of the day you have what I hesitate to call poetry, that is all about the same topic that can simply be brushed off as if it were never there to begin with. I remember listening to one slam poet in a science glass in Grade 10. I remember being inspired by it at the time, but now could not remember what it is about, which likely shows just what an impression it really made on me.
One of my greatest grievances with slam poetry is how absolutely long winded and pretentious it all is. Of course, the two go hand in hand, especially if it's being praised as deep. My time on this Earth is limited so forgive me if I ask you to get your oh so deep and original point before I keel over on the spot! I'm quite tired of hearing how life sucks and how it's hard repeated to me one thousand times over as it is, I don't need someone to ramble on for an hour about it.
That's not to say a poem cannot be long, some of the most beautiful often is, but they can actually rhyme and have a real grasp on the English language, using their oratory and writing skills to the best of their ability while slam poetry ends up feeling more like verbal diarrhea. Poetry is an art and slam poetry is a cheap ripoff that demeans real poetry.
In addition, those who often do slam poetry tend to look the same, a bunch of twenty somethings who all have some astute understanding of life and the universe or how it should go, and most often with horrible haircuts (like undercuts) to boot.
Of course, then there's the fact that slam poetry is often done in a contest, which further demeans it, turning it into a sport, a competition to see who can write the most uninspired piece of garbage and then have a group of so called intellectuals judge them, it doesn't help that the man who invented slam poetry himself has criticized it.
At this point I'm afraid I've lost my train of thought, I'm sure if anything comes back to me I'll write about. But thank you for taking the time to read this.
