By Paul Esau (Sports Editor) – Email
A night of metaphors and similes, rhythm and rhyme, tears and laughter – and even rap. That’s a good description of the 3rd annual UFV Valentine’s poetry slam, which took place in the Chilliwack campus theatre lobby on Friday, February 11, and which was generously attended by both UFV students and community members from the lower mainland. As a gleeful, yet classy, denial of the traditional poetry reading, the event was a clash of artistry and alcohol, of the metaphysical and the moronic.
Among the ten participants were several UFV students, including Cait Archer, Josh Frede, and defending slam champion Josh Tompke. The event was jointly sponsored by the English Department, the Theatre Department, and the UFV Library, with each contributing both resources and talented participants. Intimate and candle-lit, the venue featured all the essential elements of a good poetry slam: namely comfortable chairs and an accessible bar.
Slam poetry is a comparatively recent phenomenon in the Fraser Valley, and it is a hard genre to explain, especially since it is traditional within the literary community to insist that the art of poetry can only be defined by poetry. Dylan Thomas took this route when he stated that “Poetry is… what makes my toenails twinkle,” while the frigid Emily Dickenson decided “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.” Therefore Ray de Kroon, the UFV Poetry Slam’s MC, was following a well-tread path when he defined the slam as “all about dragging poetry out of the dusty anthologies and putting it back in the streets… It’s about prying it from the white knuckled grip of the intellectuals and scholars and putting it back in the hands of the artists… A slam is about re-discovering what was lost, remembering what was forgotten – it’s about sleigh rides and summer, scraped knees and ripe plums, phone calls from old friends, and evenings by the fire with a good book and a coffee.”
Even if the exact essence of slam is hard to define, the rules are fairly simple. The event is divided into two rounds and judged by audience members chosen at random from the crowd. Participants are given three minutes per round to present a poem, and must not exceed this limit. If they do, the audience is required to recite the following:
“You rat bastard, you’re ruining it for everyone, but it was well worth it!”
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on one’s perspective) all of the evening’s slammers were extremely conscientious about avoiding the “rat bastard’ label. Even a free-style rap artist known as “Danny” managed to stay fly, despite declaring that his entire performance was “straight off the dome” and therefore spontaneously unplanned and untimed.
Other highlights of the night included rivetingly personal performances by Laura Auffray and Josh Frede, along with a unique presentation by de Kroon of his poem “Lord Entropy.” Yet when the dust settled, Josh Tompke emerged with his third straight victory, lifted to glory by his two memorably-titled pieces “Fuck the Sun” and “I Can Has Love?”
Thanks are necessary to the three UFV departments involved for organizing a very successful event, and thanks also to the performing poets for their participation and imagination.
“Left & Leaving”
a sonnet by Slam participant Cait Arther
When I must leave my beloved northern shores
to reconstruct my life on solid land,
I’m hoping your young heart can understand
that I’m not leaving you behind. I swore
to honor and protect you as before,
and so it will remain. But when you can,
come live with me inside my house of sand.
I’ll shut the windows, keep you from the war
for just a little while. One day you’ll see
we only find our hearts by leaving home,
but don’t despair- you’re never far from me.
Remember in your bones and binding ties:
An open heart is never on it’s own.
A closing door is never quite goodbye.
