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After years of distancing themselves from the term
"poetry slam" in the hopes of gaining mainstream "street cred" in the
music industry or access to prestigious MFA programs, it looks like
some former "spoken word artists" and proper poets are back to branding
themselves as slammers. Does this have something to do
with a second round HBO productions focusing attention on a few lucky
teens emerging from Youth Speaks Brave New Voices competition or could
it be the dream (lust, desire, ambition) of performing at the White
House for the Obama crew that has inspired a number of performance
poets to re-embrace the moniker they once shunned as beneath their
artistic and commercial stature. The P word is not known to boost
recording sales and the S word is poison in the fine arts academies.
The chaff goes where the wind blows. One thing that will be interesting
to witness and record in the upcoming months is whether the Chicago
nurtured Obama administration recruits any Chicago based performance
poets and organizers to program and stage their "edgy" White House
poetry slams. (There's a bit of history that indicates they should.) Or
will former coastal slammers turned spoken word artists turned back
into slammers get all the kudos? Stayed tuned.
9:40 PM
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