Literary: Poetry Impresario Weslowski Hits Front Page

April 4, 2007

Three minutes and a microphone

By DHARM MAKWANA, 24 HOURS

Commercial Drive's Cafe Deux Soleils is the spot where poets zealously deliver stanzas with surgical precision. There, this past Monday night, the city's finest wordsmiths took to the stage and slammed.

Slam poetry is part punchy prose and part personal confession with a three-minute time limit.

Host and slam poet R.C. Weslowski describes the Vancouver Poetry Slam as a competitive, interactive, democratic, performance poetry event. For the audience it's a night to engage performers who aggressively vie for their support.

"You get to come in and you don't just sit there on your hands quietly, you get to cheer and boo or shout out," Weslowski says. "We encourage that sort of raucousness for the audience."

Under the slam's rules, each poet is given the same amount of time to perform a piece, typically from memory. Sitting in the rowdy crowd are five randomly selected judges who use gut reactions to score each act from 1 to 10. Score sheets are held in the air as slam fans voice their opinions until the poet finishing with the highest average score is crowned champion.

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