Bar Napkin Prophet Blog

This is my report on the Portland Poetry Slam Grand Slam on April 25th. (If you want to skip to the results…scroll down)

First off, the finals slam marked the one year anniversary of my very first slam, my 22nd birthday, and the most amazing night of my life. I know I can’t give an objective take on what happened Sunday, so I wont try, this is going to be me talking about the best night ever.

In the last year of poetry for me, I’ve gotten a 4 from a very friendly judge, a 30 from a tough group, I’ve won slams, and gotten crushed. I’ve slammed some really bad poems and had some great moments. I know I’m better than when I started and these last few months have been a real concentrated effort to be the best at this that I can be. I can not stress how much I was just excited to be there, like PSU in the NCAA tournament a couple years back, I expected to get blown out of the water. I went in so nervous I was forgetting poems I haven’t even written.

Backspace was amazing! We packed the house, people standing everywhere, sitting on the floor, bobbing heads to try and see what was happening on stage. I feel blessed that my whole family and most of my friends were able to make it to cheer me on and witness what it is I do with all my time.

The night was mostly a blurred mess shuffling between sweat fits, body shakes, and fresh air breaks. I was competing to make a Nationals Team in an event I didn’t know existed two years ago, I was competing against the people who have shaped my writing into what it is, and I was doing it in front of well over a hundred people. I had the greatest night, cheering loudly for every amazing poem, being touched by lines, and watching as Portland showed up to bring it.

As far as the results go the top five made the national team:
Eirean Bradley
Anis Mojgani
Davey Mac
Annelyse Gelman
and Me

The rest of the finalist who did amazing and who really slammed the shit out of last night were:
Randy Darris
Mellisa Rose
Phil Long
Dlux The Light
Justin Searns

I can’t really begin to explain how pumped I am to go to Nationals, to be thought of as good enough to make the team, to get to work with the best poets in Portland. I really can’t. I just want to say a very big thank you, to everyone who came to the slam, those I know, those I don’t, those I do now. I want to thank the judges and I can’t wait to earn it at Nationals in Minnesota.

Let me know if you have any questions if you want me to tell you what I thought about anything last night I’d be down. Sorry that this isn’t clinical, I just can’t do that now.

So to those of you who have been on or around my facebook page lately I thought I'd take the time to explain. Read More!

I don't know if I'm the only person who has this problem, but it's hard for me to tell lies in first person. Read More!

Let me give you a lay of the land here in Portland and a little history as far as I've been able to gather by eves dropping and being told about it. In the 90's Portland had a fairly organized slam scene and routinely sent teams to the national competition. However at some point that failed to be a true statement. Since then Portland has not sent a team to nationals Read More!

I wanted to do something a little different today. I'm going to give a bit of a run down on what I've learned this past eight months in the Portland Poetry Scene. Before I go into that I wanted to give a quick update on everything coming down the pipeline for me. Read More!

Just remember the only way to be successful at a poetry slam is to be yourself, to slam in your own style, to be an original; however, it does help if your not reading a one minute thirty second piece about getting your tonsils removed in the third grade. Read More!

Because I know no matter what they said How many tears they cried Or how many times they touched your cold dressed face You never winked Read More!

Wrote this poem awhile ago as a follow up to another piece. The first piece called It's Like That had examples of different scenes from completely different lives. What I did after writing that piece was take each scene and expand on it making full poems out of each section each with a different voice, rhythm, and style. Read More!

But here at home he can't take his safety off He takes his gun apart Hangs the different pieces on his wall A modern art tribute to the dog tags he's yet to deliver to weeping widows Read More!

The way I learned it is that poetry is three things, these according to my elementary school teachers. First it is self expression, a way of conveying a message through metered conversation. Second it is art, as legitimate as painting, sculpting, and acting; it just costs less to own. Third that it is an absolute bore and unless you love it you can't like it. They weren't all right, but they weren't all wrong. Read More!