After pouring their hearts and souls out for the audience, the new team members were selected: Matthew Brown, Mercedez Holtry, Damien Flores, Kalid Binsunni and Aaron Cuffee.
Holtry, a junior journalism major, placed second place at the 2015 Grand Slam. After listening to a showcase presented by some of Albuquerque’s renowned slam poets, Holtry said she realized she wanted to perform and began competing in poetry slams.
“The cool thing about slam is that it’s not necessarily about competition as much as it is about creating a space where people are encouraged to speak their voice and their stories and to embrace what they’ve gone through using the art of spoken word,” she said.
Holtry has won several slam events including the Albuquerque City Championship and the Albuquerque Women of the World City Championship, she said.
“Slam gives an open and safe environment for people to come out and say this is who I am and what I do,” she said. “The scores are whatever at the end of the day.”
Binsunni, who placed fourth in the 2015 grand slam and is a junior social work major, said he writes about social justice, racism, foster care and his own personal issues. For many, including Binsunni, there are benefits in writing poetry, he said
“It helps me keep my sanity in this crazy world,” Binsunni said. “I feel that it can help people if they allow it to.”
Brown, the winner of the 2015 Grand Slam and a sophomore psychology and political science major, said poetry had a similar effect on him.
“You get to tackle a lot of problems. It seems hard to write about something difficult and then read it to a bunch of people, but somehow it’s a lot easier because you get to speak and everyone just listens. It’s very healing,” he said.
The performance aspect of the poems requires extensive practice and memorization. Each poem must be delivered in three minutes or less, according to the rules of the competition.
“I practice my poems hundreds of times over, even though I have them all memorized,” Brown said.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Flores, a Chicano studies professor who took third place, agreed that memorizing pieces for slam poetry takes a lot of time.
“You get to lose four months of your life,” said Flores. “Our rehearsal schedule is very serious. This is professional-level performance poetry.”
For the competition, five judges are randomly selected from the audience to assign scores between zero to 10 for each poem. The final five poets with the highest scores go on to compete at the National Poetry Slam in Oakland, California in August.
The competition started with 11 poets. After the first round, the three with the lowest scores were eliminated, and after the second round two more were eliminated. The third round determined the places of the five winners and the alternate.
Nayla Degreff is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Nayla_Degreff.
