The Martlet

The finale of the 2009 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (CFSW) opened with the noun-bouncing, adjective objectifying, viral verb conjugating first lady of the Canadian spoken word community, Andrea Thompson.

During the festivities on Saturday night, Nov. 14, after five days of intensive performances from poets and artists across Canada, it was hard to tell who was smiling wider: the audience or the performers.

A slamming good time

This year marked the first time that Victoria hosted the national festival, marking its sixth-annual year running. The wooden warmth of Alix Goolden Performance Hall wrapped the evening with linguistic openness. C.R. Avery set the back-street-cigarette-blues-bar-beat-box mood with the soothing notes of harmonica and vocal experimentation.

Audience members could feel the intensity exuding off the four slam teams in the room, representing the finalist groups competing for the winning mark. Spectators were about to witness the best of the best of Canada’s new and growing poetry community — a community producing such names as the Fugitives, Avery and Sherry D. Wilson.

Team Vancouver, Team Ottawa, Team Toronto and the Slaughter House Four (a wildcard slam team of randomly-placed slam poets) all sat on the bottom floor of the hall, staring up at the microphone that would amplify their words to the largest audience in CFSW history.

After the first poem breached the three-minute limit, the crowd erupted into the traditional time penalty chant: “You rat bastard, you’re ruining it for everyone! But it was well worth it!” The scorecards were erected, and the audience was instructed with the chant: “applaud the poet, not the score.”

Yoga, erotica and poetry

From Nov. 10 to 14, a diverse group of folks skulked in dimly-lit corners, moving lips, shaking hands and hips and generally conveying the impression that heavy medication could help them — but that’s just the neo-beat nature of slam poetry.

The CFSW, the Olympics of slam, featured theme slams, workshops, open mic nights and special events, including the grand event, the national poetry slam. Attendees (made up of performers, local residents and out-of-towners alike) were privy to everything from classes on yoga poetry and guerilla poetry, to showcases of Aboriginal, erotic, queer/transgender and pan-African poetry.

The erotica showcase drew some friendly-fire criticism regarding the sensational nature of some poems. While many audience members delighted over the unspoken topics, others raised a few eyebrows.

“There are definitely pieces [written] to make you feel uncomfortable, because not everyone talks about these things — like the poem about period sex from Christian Drake,” said slam Master of Ceremonies Kristy Westendorp. “But a lot of these poems are forward thinking … There will be some in the audience who squirm, and others who say ‘yup, period sex; yup, anal sex.’ They make you uncomfortable, but there is nothing wrong with that.”

Competing for the word

Slam poetry is competitive performance poetry, encompassing innumerable topics and uncountable points of view, commonly on the most infamous poetic topic — love.

This year’s 12 slam teams were Saskatoon, Lanark County (the only rural slam team), Halifax, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg, London, a wildcard team (Slaughter House Four) and hometown favorite: Victoria.

“[The CFSW] has been in big cities. It’s gone to Vancouver and Toronto and Ottawa. We really wanted to show that Victoria, although we’re small, we’re mighty,” said Victoria slam team member and CFSW ‘09 organizer Missie Peters.

While mighty indeed, Victoria’s slam team didn’t make it to the top four. This year’s slam champions came all the way from Ottawa, and took the gold with slams integrating highly political, creative, loving, team-based, hip-hop, Canadian rhythms. Rolling in milliseconds behind Ottawa is our trusted neighbor, Vancouver. Third, was Toronto and fourth was the high-energy Slaughter House Four, with members hailing from across the country.

Victoria’s team maintains the motto: “the point is not the points; the point is poetry.” Peters displays this attitude. Laughing, she explained she didn’t even know where Victoria’s team placed among the 12 involved. But, she said Victoria was “super stoked” about how everything went.

“Artists, DJs and volunteers came together and made the festival what it was,” Peters said. “The response we got from the participants across the country was — ‘wow.’ It was the best ever festival.”

The babies of spoken word

Slam hasn’t been in Canada for very long, Peters explained. There has only been a national competition here for six years, compared to 15 years in the U.S.

The inaugural national festival was called the Canadian Spoken Wordlympics in Ottawa in 2004. But, Peters says, slam is on the rise and more teams are joining Spoken Word Canada (SpoCan) every year.

Next year’s slam will probably see 16 teams, Peters said — three more from cities in Ontario, one from Newfoundland and possibly one from Edmonton.

“Slam really challenges you artistically,” Peters said. “And if you every get a chance to be part of organizing an event like this, do it. You learn so much. And the skills you develop are invaluable.”