The European Poetry Slam Night, by Nicholas Sutton

The Poetry Slam Final is upon us. The last night proves a massive public hit, with a packed auditorium in Heimathafen with standing room only. The mood is electric and the tension is heavy in the air. After the heats, the workshops and the final food together, competitors and admirers come together with genuine enthusiasm.
First the crowd is treated to a collection of French poets (from the Ligue slam française) performing a broad range of styles and moods, from heartfelt solo works, hip-hop tinged double acts and an outstanding four piece work demonstrating the more complex vocal idiosyncrasies of slamming.
Next comes a highlight of the night; the poets in residence perform their pieces, painstakingly devised during the last week. The quality of the work is, as can be expected, unbelievably high. Themes of personal confidence, self identification and love are broadly addressed in each poem, with an overt play on the use of language adding a truly European and somewhat academic dimension to the performance. The use of staging also adds an extra sheen of professionalism to the proceedings, to create a truly original and detailed work. Stand out slams include a slight but profound German piece about a petal in the wind, and a lonely girls paranoid monologue about fish sticks, conversation and wild living. The poets obviously were proud of the collection and the audience showed their appreciation with riotous applause.
Finally, the competition began. The contestants flew the flag for many countries; England, Portugal, France, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia were all represented.
The first slammer (Tobi Kunze from Germany)  gave an extremely slick and enthusiastic improvised performance about the essence of poetry itself, but unfortunately fell fowl of the time limit rule losing valuable points, much to the dismay of the audience and even a compare! However the rules stuck and the good score was reduced to a nail biting ‘average high’. The poets continued speaking over politics, sex, life and more politics. Jorge Vez Nandes managed to create a call and answer in his given time ‘You don’t give a shit’ peeling out from excited audience members. Jaan Malin from Estonia performed perhaps the most phonically interesting poem, using body, acting and intonation to add to a strange and enchanting, almost fantasyesque slam that blurred the boundaries between slamming and authentic ‘performance’ poetry; it went down extremely well with the audience. French contestant Dizzy Les swooned the audience with a polished, almost hip-hop styled work, again using the body and movement to create a confident and stylish work. Romanian Chris Tanescu gave the most overtly sexualised. The complete collection of poets demonstrated the wealth of talent burgeoning on the European scene, and was a testament to the style, effort and dedication held amongst the artists at work.
The grand finale was whittled down to 5 performers, Id, Peter Waugh, Jaan Malin, Dizzy Les and Tobi Kunze. The atmosphere thickened and the tension increased. The poets each gave an unbelievable final turn, full of nervous energy and a visible lust to win. While all performed to standard, the Hungarian enrty caused controversy for a few minutes when for the first time in the evening a translation of a foreign text into English was visible to the audience, causing some angst amongst supporters of other entries; the compares were fast to explain that all entries were entitled to this, and only Id took the offer. He then struggled with his extremely forthright and cutting view of the current Hungarian political and social situation, creating an icy cool before the winners were decided upon.
The audience was called upon to applaud for each entry, giving indecipherable and unabashed applause for each contestant. The process was repeated, with the English entry bowing out first, followed by the extremely popular but possibly to leftfield Estonian act. In a truly tight and almost impossible decision making process, the Estonian entry was knocked out, leaving the French and German entries to battle it out. After a final attempt to let the audience decide who should win, the compares form the evening took the bold move of awarding a joint supremacy to both contestants, reaffirming the overall feeling of togetherness across country boundaries, and the total appreciation of art through words. The event was nothing short of a perfect evening.

NS

~ by europeanpoetryslamblog on October 6, 2009.