When I was in London recently, Todd Swift, a Canadian poet who lives there, told me he thought it was a mistake to include in my bio the fact that I had taken part in poetry slams. When he'd first moved to London a couple of years previously he'd let it be known that not only had he taken part in poetry slams himself; he had also been involved in organising one in his native Montreal back in the early nineteen nineties. What he hadn't known was that in Britain there is a metaphorical Berlin Wall, complete with barbed wire and quite vicious guard-dogs, between the performance poetry scene - which is large and very active, especially in the major cities--and the mainstream poetry world. And poetry slams are definitely on the performance side of that divide. In parts of the British poetry world, the phrase 'slam-poet' is more likely to lead to the door being closed on your hand, than it is to an invitation to read at the Hay-On-Wye Festival or take tea with Andrew Motion.

For those of you who haven't experienced one, a slam is a performance poetry competition in which poets perform for not more than three minutes, sometimes, but not always, without the aid of the page in front of them. The winner is usually chosen by a panel of five judges selected at random from the audience.¹ Each judge scores the poet out of ten, and then both the highest and lowest score are disregarded; and the middle three scores totted up. So, if your best friend gives you a ten, or your worst enemy gives you a zero, it probably won't count. At the annual Cuirt Festival Grand Slam,² the winner is chosen by an appointed three person panel, usually consisting of two poets, here to read at the festival, and a member of the public who has been part bribed, part press-ganged into the role. The prize a poetry slam winner receives will vary wildly from an all-expenses-paid trip to read at the Green Mill in Chicago³ for the winner of the annual Cuirt Festival Grand Slam, to a simple bottle of house red for the winner of the monthly North Beach Nights Poetry Slam⁴ at BK's wine bar.

What defines a poetry slam is the competitive element, and the foregrounding of performance rather than text. Although, in Ireland at least, literary quality is taken into account. At the Cuirt Slam the judges are asked to consider the literary merit of the poem as well as the performance of the poet and the audience reaction. One or two of our more mildewed critics have argued that this element of overt competition is a bad thing, and have tried to dismiss slams as a poetry version of You're A Star or Pop Idol. But as anyone who has had to navigate its sometimes rather shark-infested waters will tell you: the Irish poetry scene was already a profoundly competitive place, long before Slam tentatively set foot on eireann's green isle. In her essay 'Slams, Open Readings, and Dissident Traditions'⁵ Maria Damon argues that in America:

"slams have inaugurated some folks into a recent understanding of poetry as a competitive sport (a concept which makes traditionalists uneasy, in spite of the arguably more cutthroat competition for publication opportunities, admission to M.F.A programmes, and university teaching positions that poisons the mainstream "creative writing" community)"

Now, I'm sure what Damon

"critics...have tried to dismiss slams as a poetry version of You're A Star or Pop Idol. But as anyone who has had to navigate its sometimes rather shark-infested waters will tell you: the Irish poetry scene was already a profoundly competitive place, long before Slam tentatively set foot on eireann's green isle."

says about competition between poets for university teaching positions in the US is not at all true of the hallowed institution in which this conference is taking place.⁶ But I think her point is valid all the same. If poets were animals, they would be cats, because, like cats, while they are awake poets are always on the make. And this is typically just as true of the quietest sonneteer, as it is of the loudest slammer. Sometimes more true.

We should remember, that the tendency to draw a severe black line between poetry as a spoken art and poetry as a written art is a comparatively recent thing. Until the invention of printing in the fifteenth century, poetry in this part of the world was an exclusively oral art. Poems were passed on orally from generation to generation, with the inevitable variations in the text. Until Guttenburg conceived of the idea of moveably type in 1452, it was impossible for a poet to be anything other than a performance poet. In Ireland the tradition of poetry, the spoken art is particularly strong. What was Anthony Reaftearai (1779-1835) if not a performance poet? According to the Oxford Companion to Irish Literature:

"When Lady Gregory and Yeats were gathering folk material in Co. Galway in 1897 and thereafter, they encountered many stories about Reaftearai and found that his poems were still sung and recited."

Reaftearai was illiterate, and his poems were never written down during his lifetime. In 'Na Buachailli Bana'--a poem celebrating the subversive activities of the Whiteboys--Reaftearai says of Denis 'The Rope' Brown, High Sheriff of Mayo,

"I would like to stick my spear into his huge stomach."

Exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to hear at a Cuirt or North Beach Nights poetry slam!

The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature goes on to say that Raiftearai was "Often destitute, his life free of normal constraint: according to an enemy and poetic rival, Peatsai O'Callanain, he 'went with' a woman, Siobhan, and they had two illegitimate children..." Sounds like a performance poet to me. No doubt if he were alive today, he'd be taking part in the Cuirt Poetry Grand Slam and e-mailing me to see if there was any chance I could arrange a spot for him as a featured reader at Over The Edge.⁷

As the nineteen century goes on, Irish poetry for the most part retreats into the Victorian drawing room. The image of Reaftearai reciting his verses to peasant ne'er-do-wells gives way to the image of Mister Yeats reciting his poems to small gatherings of old dears, and not-so-old dears, pausing between stanzas to sip tea from a bone china cup. In many ways Yeats - great poet, but catastrophically bad reader of his own work - is the spiritual father of what I call the tweed-jacket poets: the ones with the PhD from Trinity and first collection on its way any minute now from Gallery Press

And the worst contemporary poetry readings, at which the gentleman or lady poet recites his or her serious words to five or six people and an elderly Labrador in a hotel with terrible carpet, have their roots in that Victorian drawing room. Although it has to be said, the decline which has taken the Irish poetry reading from Coole Park and Lissadell to the small provincial hotel has been a steep one. Listening to Yeats making a ridiculous job of reading great poems in a grand setting is one thing; but sitting in deadly embarrassed silence, while A.N.Other declaims his or her verses to a deaf Labrador in the Imperial Hotel, is a beast of an altogether different variety.

For the organisers of this sort of poetry reading, heroic failure is what it's all about. The worst thing in the world would be if people had the temerity to turn up in significant numbers and actually appeared to be enjoying the experience. This would be poetry become entertainment, and must be stamped out at all costs. Because, as we all learned at school, poetry isn't about entertainment, it's about suffering. To these people, poetry readings are the literary equivalent of half-eleven mass on a wet Sunday in Mullingar, without the jokes.

Poetry slams and

"As the nineteen century goes on, Irish poetry for the most part retreats into the Victorian drawing room. The image of Reaftearai reciting his verses to peasant ne'er-do-wells gives way to the image of Mister Yeats reciting his poems to small gatherings of old dears, and not-so-old dears, pausing between stanzas to sip tea from a bone china cup."

open readings may be American imports, but they have the potential to re-energise Irish poetry, by reconnecting it with its own oral tradition. Indeed, they are already doing it. At the Over The Edge: Open Readings in Galway City Library, there are always three featured readers, with an open-mic afterwards. It is not a poetry slam, or competition of any type. And some of those who've been featured readers are well known: these have included the likes of Geraldine Mills, Jean O'Brien, Nigel McLoughlin, Jo Slade, Ben Howard, Deirdre Cartmill, Nessa O'Mahony, Ann Le Marquand Hartigan, Michael D. Higgins, Paul Perry, Gerry Hanberry, Terry McDonagh and Collette NicAodha. But the inclusive, democratic element which an open-mic introduces has been crucial to the success of these readings. Several poets who began their reading careers very tentatively at the open-mic have gone on to be featured readers. A similar democratic openness is also crucial to poetry slams.

Writing in the "Art Attack" column in Galway Advertiser,⁸ poet Trish Casey had this to say:

"Slam is coming to prominence now and it's happening here in Galway. Why Galway and why now? Primarily because there is a group of writers on the literary scene here who don't believe in literary borders, elite territories or ghettos and embrace the word in all its forms, both written and spoken. This spirit of openness is manifest in workshops, mentoring and coaching services, which support the artistic development of fellow writers. North Beach Nights, the Cuirt Grand Slam and the Over the Edge readings are a demonstration of this enlightened synergy. We live in artistically interesting times."

Lately a number of poets, by no means all of them Galway-based, with a wide variety of reading and writing styles, have begun to emerge from this broad literary scene, of which slam is only a part. Poets such as Neil McCarthy,⁹ Celeste Auge, Dave Lordan,¹⁰ Marion Moynihan,¹¹ Anthony Daly, Mary Madec, Billy Ramsell¹² and Lorna Shaughnessy. Some of these have only just begun to publish, others have already won major awards for their poetry and have first collections forthcoming.

In the context of the "enlightened synergy" Casey talks about, labels such as 'performance poet' and 'page poet' are unhelpful in that they tend to reinforce what is an entirely artificial divide. In Britain, as I've described, the concrete seems to have set on that divide for now. But it need not be so here, where things are still in flux. In the same article, Casey also makes the point that:

"Having seen the pitfalls of slam/spoken word in other countries, we can avoid making the same mistakes here. Slam needs to be rooted in a broad literary/artistic context in order to prevent it veering into a cultural cul-de-sac."

The cliche of the performance poet - the might-have-been rock-star in the questionable leather-jacket, who instead of availing of the appropriate psychotherapy, likes to leap around a stage, shrieking and making what sound like animal noises - certainly does have some truth in it. I've met him. And I think I've met his brother. But in Ireland, he is not the norm.

It is perhaps best to view performance poetry - although as I've said, I think the term is perhaps unhelpful - not as some exotic American import, but something which has always been part of Irish poetry to a greater or lesser degree. There are several well established Irish poets for whom performance--whether or not they would choose to call it that - is important. Paul Durcan, Cathal O'Searcaigh, Rita Ann Higgins and Louis DePaor, to name just four. No doubt if they were rising up through the ranks just now, they would each at some stage have competed in the Cuirt Poetry Grand Slam. Poetry slams are, in their way, as valid a form of competition as the Hennessy Literary Awards or the Fish Short Story Competition. They are not the be all and end all; the best poem rarely wins any competition. But we are, I think, in the process of inventing our own gentler, more literary version of slam here.

In Galway there has been a quiet revolution in the poetry world over the past three years. Of late it has been a little less quiet.¹³ It has the potential to help Irish poetry finally shake off the legacy of that Victorian drawing room. And as Dave Lordan, the Dublin-based winner of the 2005 Patrick Kavanagh Award, puts it: in the process to liberate Irish poetry from what he calls "the dictatorship of the one page lyric." There is a fork in the road up ahead, and the sign going one way reads 'Death in a provincial hotel', the sign going the other: 'New life'. I know which way I'm going.

* * *

Notes

¹ The judges are sometimes chosen using a raffle system; tickets are distributed to all audience members not taking part in the slam.
² Has taken place annually at The Cuirt International Festival of Literature in Galway since 2003.
³ The venue in Chicago where the first poetry slams where organised by Marc Kelly Smith in 1986.
⁴Monthly poetry slam event in Galway. It was founded by Sara Byrne in May, 2004, and is now organised by John Walsh. It was the first Irish poetry slam to use the American raffle-ticket system to choose the judges. It takes its name from North Beach in San Francisco, where Allen Ginsberg first read his poem 'Howl'. Credit for the name goes to Susan Millar DuMars.
⁵ Close Listening - Poetry and the Performed Word. Edited by Charles Bernstein. Published by Oxford University Press, 1998.
⁶ First Galway Conference of Irish Studies - Orality and Modern Irish Culture, hosted by The Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway, 7-10 June 2006.
⁷Reading series in Galway City Library, organised by the author and Susan Millar DuMars. It began in January 2003 as On The Edge, changing its name to Over The Edge in December of that year. At the April 2006 Cuirt International Festival of Literature, the Cuirt Debut spot was given over to a reading by five Over The Edge alumni: poets Ed Boyne, Celeste Auge, Sheila Phelan and Lorna Shaughnessy, and fiction writer, Jim Mullarkey.
⁸ The Galway Advertiser, Thursday June 1st, 2006.
⁹Cork-born poet who during the summer of 2005 organised 'The Voice and The Verse' in Galway: a series of events each featuring an emerging singer-song-writer and a poet. Poets such as Moya Cannon and Louis DePaor took part, as did Steve Murray - winner of the 2005 Cuirt Poetry Grand Slam.
¹⁰ Dave Lordan won the 2005 Patrick Kavanagh Award. His first collection, The Boy in the Ring, will be published by Salmon Poetry.
¹¹ Marion Moynihan's first collection will be published soon by Doghouse Press.
¹² Billy Ramsell's first collection is forthcoming from Bradshaw Books.
¹³ See The Galway Advertiser, May 11th 2006, May 18th 2006, & June 1st 2006.

  © Kevin Higgins 2007.

Contents: Mar-May '11

Garrett Socol: The Unfortunate Aneursym of the Potato Blossom Queen: As Melinda Wild headed south... Laura Solomon: Cognition: It started with the headache. It wasn't dull and throbbing, it was a piercing brain... Alan Beard: The Heebie-Jeebies: Barry took the tab at breakfast with his coffee. He skimmed through the mail... Mary Wilkinson: What I Want to Say Is This: Sometimes role reversal happens without anyone handing you the script. It can happen so quickly... Vikram Kapur: The Immortal Vision of Ram Kumar: Lung cancer. Ram Kumar goggled at the doctor, 'But I don't even smoke.' ... Tamas Dobozy: Meadowlands: In the spring of 1985, shortly after the death of his wife, Loretta (who also happened to be my ex-wife), Harley... Kevin Higgins: The Role of Performance in Contemporary Irish Poetry When I was in London recently, Todd Swift, a Canadian poet who lives there, told me he thought... George Moore: Three Poems: "The Cannibals". "For the Dead Student's Parents". "The Attraction of Tombs". Marcus Whalbring: Three Poems: "The Taste of Ice". "Something". "In Ohio". Richard Halperin: Three Poems: "The Liffey". "Sleepy City". "Muguet Day".