Check it - Last night, FOUR HUNDRED & EIGHTY poetry loving people stood in line for over an hour to squeeze tight into a sweaty venue called Chop Suey for the GRAND SLAM - the final event of the 2007 Seattle poetry festival.
Youth Speaks took the stage first with mentors and current youth slam competitors making it KNOWN that the next generation CAN and WILL CONTINUE TO speak for itself. Any of the youth that took the stage could easily have held their own in the slam that took place an hour later.
Next was The Suicide Kings - 3 years since this spoken word trio's last Seattle performance - and the audience was aching for them to take the stage. Youth Speaks set them up well, and the Kings then knocked it out of the park with hard hitting, knuckle biting performance and writing that was full of sucker-punch lines, boundary crossing and stereotype stomping. The Kings brought this same energy on their last trip thru Seattle but added even more personal and vulnerable confessionals. The audience was not the same after this.
Then came the slam, and the audience was chomping at the bit to hear their favorites seattle poets spit their truths out into the club. After two filthy, tense rounds, with NOT ONE low point, the judges and audience had selected their team, but before their names were announced we had to have our 3rd round to determine a Grand Slam Champ. Little did the crowd know that the three finalists had decided to throw the competition and split the title AND cash. And so, Danny Sherrard returned to the stage to perform a beautifully crafted and spiritual piece on the page, followed by Ryler who was then joined on-stage by Buddy Wakefield to perform a DUET they created while on last year's slam team. The crowd went WILD!!
And finally - the 2007 Seattle national Slam team is:
Tara Hardy - past Seattle Poet Populist, 2002 Seattle Slam team member and founder of the Bent Writing Institute
Danny Sherrard - alumni of Youth Speaks Seattle (member of nationally ranke youth team) and Seattle's official rep at the Individual World Poetry Slam
Buddy Wakefield - two time World Poetry Slam Champion and 2006 Seattle Slam team member
Ryler Dustin - 2006 Slam team member and finalist at IWPS.