We had a very active open reading this time, with quite a few people new to Untitled. Ricky had us chanting, “Please Come Back!” over and over. We also had people who jumped on the list as we were going along, which is always nice to see. From my own experience, sometimes you come into a venue and you’re not so sure you want to get up in front of everybody, so you hang back, waiting to see what the vibe says. Then if it seems cool, you put your name on the list – which is a testament to an open mic that’s really open, that is, welcoming to new people.

We also had a couple of our FreeVerse! youth poets stop by. Sangeet, who slammed with the 8th Grade crew from Lowell Community Charter Public School back in early June, was on the wavelength and did one of several pro-choice pieces (with a killer instinct to rhyme “abortion” and “orphan”). Jakob Sollivan, who was part of last year’s Jack Kerouac Poetry Competition at Lowell High, got on the mic, too, with an experimental piece using a mirror metaphor (it’s pretty cool when poets actually use poetic devices).

But the metaphorical incendiaries were hottest for our Samurai Slam, which finished off the event. We had six slammers, which meant that, in the best Slam Samurai fashion, there were five judges (in other words, the other poets) who were scoring each poem. We did two rounds, without elimination, the top three scorers won cash, but everyone got a prize (thanks to a timely intervention from Lauren Strange), so I think we all went home happy or at least full of poetry. We had Kat Christakis, Kayla Kennedy, Mike Linehan, Kris Rouille, Greg Smith, and Zee – all veterans of one slam team or another, from Louder Than a Bomb to Chicago’s last National Poetry Slam in 2018 – so it was an all-star slam.

It was interesting to see that there was very little score creep in the scores for the slam, and the poet in the first slot – who is usually at a distinct disadvantage – scored pretty well. We had a three-way tie for the top score (27.3) in the first round, too. All of which shows the Samurai Poets were pretty consistent as judges. Normally, slam tries to bring in judges who know nothing about what’s going on, and sometimes that results in some pretty erratic or even wildly crazy numbers, but obviously when the judges are also the slammers, there’s a certain kind of professionalism in the scoring. It just shows what I’ve always said – that slam is a love-ly kind of competition. We really do appreciate the other poets who perform, regardless of whether they win or lose. We’re not so much like the Yankees and the Red Sox (hated rivals) as we are like the Teletubbies or Care Bears (all hugs).

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Event Recap and Photos from our Untitled Open Mic ft Samurai Slam | 7.6.22