Maybe you've penned a little verse on your own. Or you read some poetry in high school or college and really didn't like it. Maybe you just hunger for some more enlightening nightlife options than head-banger bands, wet t-shirt contests, and big-screen sports.

Whatever the motivation, this book is devoted to welcoming you back to the world of poetry, proving that poetry can be fun and engaging, and showing you how to get involved in slam poetry by performing onstage, organizing slam shows, or even just becoming a more informed member of the audience. This book also provides plenty of sample poems, both in print and as audio recordings on the CDs, to show you some of the best of what slam has to offer.

What You Will Discover in This Book

This book includes information for all levels of poetry slam, from youngster to retiree, from novice to Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet. It presents a brief history of the slam poetry movement along with the vision that inspired its beginning and fuels its development. It shows you what you need to know to compose and perform effective poetry at everything from open-mike night at your local coffee shop to paid performances at professional theatres. And if you don't have a slam show in your area, this book shows you how to start your own show. As an added bonus, this book takes you beyond the city limits to the National Poetry Slam and introduces you to the national and international community.

To provide some structure for this hodgepodge of topics and techniques, this book divides the material into the following easily digestible parts:

• Part 1, "What Is the Poetry Slam?" provides a brief history of literature's oral tradition from the ancient Greeks to the present, reveals the vision that drives the slam poetry movement, and explains the rules and regulations that govern slam poetry competitions.
• Part 2, "Becoming a Performance Poet," shows you how to compose and perform your own original poems. In this part, you learn techniques for composing poetry that's conducive to a live performance, exercises for rehearsing your poem and honing your acting skills, and how to sniff out places where they'll let you onstage.
• Part 3, "Going Poet Professional," is for the more seasoned slam poet—when you feel confident enough in your craft to start making some money at it. This part starts by showing you how to market yourself and your performance, organize and manage a tour, and act like a professional, so people will take you seriously. It finishes by giving you some ideas for how to make money outside your performances.
• Part 4, "Setting the Stage for Yourself and Others," moves you backstage and center stage, making you the puppet master of your very own slam show. First you learn if you're cut out for the job and want the aggravation. The remaining chapters go on to show you how to locate and evaluate prospective venues, assemble a team of volunteers, take control of your show, and deal with critics.
• Part 5, "We Are Slamily: The Slam Family," takes you beyond your local slam to the national and international community. In this part, you learn how the organization operates and how you can get involved. You even learn how (and when) to fill out the essential paperwork for entering your team into the national competition. This part also helps you to understand more fully the competitive nature of slam and see it at work in the international scene.
• Appendixes. At no additional charge, we included three valuable appendixes. Appendix A provides a list of additional books and articles about slam. Appendix B presents addresses and brief reviews of various slam websites. And Appendix C defines the most common slam jargon and details about key slam rules and regulations.

Notes, Tips, Cautions, and Other Extras

As you read through this book, you'll begin to notice that the pages are sprinkled with little boxes of text. Think of these as jewelry boxes—they contain some gems that were just too important to blend in with the other text. Be sure to check them out.

Dig This!
As I was writing this book, ideas popped into my head that didn't quite fit into the standard text but were too important to leave out. I stuck them in these Dig This! boxes so you wouldn't feel cheated.

Backstage Skinny
When you've spent as many years as I have performing at and organizing poetry slams, you learn tricks and techniques from the best (and the worst) slam poets and organizers. These Backstage Skinny boxes take you behind the scenes to let you in on some of the secrets to success.

SlamSlang
Every discipline has its own shorthand and jargon, and slam poetry is no different. To keep you from feeling like an outsider, These SlamSlang boxes highlight and define any terms and phrases that you might find unfamiliar. Don't miss the glossary at the back of this book, either.

Whoa!
Take my advice and learn from my mistakes—I've made plenty. To avoid some of the bonehead blunders made by most beginning slammers and organizers, scan the book for these Whoa! boxes and glean some sage advice.

SlamSpeak
Poets have composed poetry to deal with every imaginable emotion, experience, and topic. When a poem is particularly pertinent to a topic or a seasoned slam poet was able to offer a unique insight, I dropped it in inside one of these little (and sometimes big) boxes.

CD Track
The CDs at the back of this book contain some magnificent poetry and commentary. If a track on a CD is relevant to the current discussion, this CD Track icon tells you which track to play.