When Patricia Smith was a kid, she wrote the same poetry everyone else writes.
"I wrote about crushes or mad-at-the world poems that I would stuff in the kitchen drawer and forget about until the next time I had a crush or was pissed off," she said.
Smith has won the title in the national individual slam competition four times.
Seventeen years ago, she went with some friends to a poetry festival in Chicago with the aim of getting drunk and making fun of the poets. Instead she said she found a vibrant literary community she hadn't known about.
"I didn't think, 'Oh I'm going to write poetry,'" she said. "I just wanted to hear what people had to say."
An organizer she met at that event dragged her to a couple of readings. She said she decided she had to try it.
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"It's like having a throat you don't use," she said. "I did a lot of open mics. I didn't think about the competition or the slam part of it until I realized how much power those poets had over the audience."
After a while, Smith said, you can tell which poets do poetry because they read about it, and it's a nice, trendy thing to do, and which people would write poetry even if it didn't make a sound. When she saw Albuquerque poet and organizer Danny Solis perform at a bar in Boston years ago, she said she could tell he was the real deal.
Smith said she would definitely write poetry even if no one ever heard it.
"It's my way of translating the world," she said. "You watch CNN and see all these crazy news stories. Just dealing with facts can drive us crazy. You have to be able to flip that coin over and respond to it. You've got that license when you write poetry."
Smith said she was able to call herself a poet when she realized she was writing things that were only for her.
Her favorite poets are the ones she would meet at the open mic nights, she said.
"People who pumped gas, teachers, ex-cons - people who thought it was important to get up on stage on a Sunday and say to a room of strangers, who had to say, 'This is what I'm thinking about.' Those are my favorite poets. Those who write because they can't help it."
Smith said slam has rigidly structured categories nowadays, and a lot of poets write about injustices with a hip-hop flare.
"The problem right now is you can tune into HBO and see what's being touted as the new poetry," she said. "It's easy to pour yourself into that mold and have people respond to you."
A good poem performs itself because of the way you feel about it, Smith said.
Smith went up against Jimmy Santiago Baca in the 1997 Taos Poetry Circus. The circus typically lasts 10 rounds, and poets stand in a boxing ring, going head-to-head in front of a panel of judges.
One of the rounds requires the poets to make up poems on the spot, riffing off a single word. Smith said the value of being able to think on your feet is underrated.
"We have to know whether or not it's possible to think poetically," she said. "Eventually, what you're trying to reach is you think that way all the time and translate what you see through a poetic eye."
Smith had this advice for young college poets: Don't study too much.
"You can enter a classroom with a very distinct voice and have it taught out of you," she said. "We have these official poetic voices and you can overlearn it. You can overstudy it."
Smith said aspiring poets should get out of the classroom and head to an open mic to talk to people who do more than study - people who write their poetry on their coffee break.
"Nothing's wrong with studying other voices as long as you don't forget what you want to do with your own," she said.
Coming Attraction
Patricia Smith
Kimo Theater,423 Central
Saturday. 8 p.m
Price. $12
Info-883-7800
