Recent speculations

about the death of slam aside…

I’ve read a lot of stuff lately about how slams are suffering in attendance, places are losing venues, etc.

A few interesting local counterpoints to this:

1. Gotpoetry Live, which has an open and no slam, is growing. Our core audience is expanding, we have a good variety of styles, ages, and readers, and if the switch to the new one feature a month format that we started this week is any indication, the audience is welcoming the opportunity for greater involvement with the event.

(For the record — we’re a weekly venue doing one week of “new poems,” one “theme open” (this week, the theme is “ring” interpreted anyway you like), one feature, and one poetry + music night with house musicians available to back you up; Faro’s committed to being our house bassist, and bring-yer-own noisemakers encouraged too).

2. I don’t attend much anymore, but the Poets’ Asylum in Worcester only slams once a month and it seems to me that the non-slam nights get greater attendance than the slam nights. Generally, attendance is good.

3. Bobby Gibbs’ new reading at the Hotel Vernon — the only Worcester reading taking place in a bar — seems to be picking up speed.

4. Worcester’s Storytellers Reading has been revived and seems (from the one time I’ve been there) to have picked up right where it left off.

5. Cantab nights are flourishing, but when I’ve been there recently, the crowd diminishes by at least half right before the slam starts.

Maybe the question isn’t about poetry, but about what’s offered in terms of variety. These are all very different types of readings and they all seem to be doing OK. It seems to me that when the readings in one area offer community and variety, it works; when it’s not, it doesn’t. Maybe slam is old hat now.