A poetry slam is a competition arts event in which poets perform spoken word poetry before a live audience and a panel of judges. Culturally, poetry slams are a break with the past image of poetry as an elitist or rigid art form. While formats can vary, slams are often loud and lively, with audience participation, cheering and dramatic delivery. Hip-hop music and urban culture are strong influences, and backgrounds of participants tend to be diverse.
Spoken word refers to an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a late 20th century continuation of an ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetics of recitation and word play, such as the performer's live intonation and voice inflection. Spoken word is a "catchall" term that includes any kind of poetry recited aloud, including poetry readings, poetry slams, jazz poetry, and hip hop music, and can include comedy routines and prose monologues. Unlike written poetry, the poetic text takes its quality less from the visual aesthetics on a page, but depends more on phonaesthetics, or the aesthetics of sound.
Unbreakable (2005) was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by the Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) promotion that took place on September 11, 2005 at the TNA Impact! Zone in Orlando, Florida. It was the first under the Unbreakable name, the second was Unbreakable 2019. It was also the ninth event in the 2005 TNA PPV schedule. Nine professional wrestling matches and two pre-show matches were featured on the card, three of which were for championships.
Roger Bonair-Agard is a poet and performance artist. He has made numerous television and radio appearances, has led countless workshops and lectures, and has performed his poetry at many US universities as well as at international festivals in Germany, Switzerland, Milan, and Jamaica. He has been accused of sexual abuse by multiple people, including other poets.
Robert Polito is a poet, biographer, essayist, critic, educator, curator, and arts administrator. He received the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography in 1995 for Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson. The founding director of the New School Graduate Writing Program in New York City, he was President of the Poetry Foundation from 2013–2015, before returning to the New School as a Professor of Writing.
Steinmetz College Prep is a public 4–year high school located in the Belmont Cragin community area on the Northwest Side of Chicago, Illinois. Steinmetz is a part of the Chicago Public Schools district. The school is named for the German-American mathematician and electrical engineer Charles Proteus Steinmetz. The school opened in 1934. Steinmetz is an International Baccalaureate (IB) Programme school. The school has an active Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC).
Siskel/Jacobs Productions is a Chicago, Illinois-based documentary and film-production company.
Louder Than a Bomb is a 2010 American documentary film about Louder Than a Bomb, an annual youth poetry slam in Chicago. The film was directed and produced by Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel. It follows the stories of several high school teams and individuals leading up to Louder Than a Bomb 2008 and their experiences at the slam. It opened theatrically in New York City on July 30, 2010 and opened in Los Angeles on August 6, 2010 at the 14th Annual DocuWeeks.
Brave New Voices was created by Youth Speaks Inc in 1998 after the inaugural Youth Speaks Teen slam poetry in San Francisco – the first poetry slam dedicated to youth in the world. Since that time, Brave New Voices has grown to represent youth ages 13–19 from all across the United States and several cities and countries from around the world. BNV is the largest ongoing spoken word event in the world. Cities compose teams of their top 4-6 youth poets to bring to the festival. When the festival began only four teams participated, and the competition has since grown to more than 50 teams.
Chicago literature is writing, primarily by writers born or living in Chicago, that reflects the culture of the city.
Genesis (2005) was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) promotion that took place on November 13, 2005 at the Impact Zone in Orlando, Florida. It was the first event under the Genesis name and eleventh event in the 2005 TNA PPV schedule. Seven professional wrestling matches and two pre-show matches were featured on the event's card, one of which involved a championship.
The Individual World Poetry Slam (iWPS) is a yearly poetry slam tournament put on by Poetry Slam, Inc. that pits individual slam poets from around the world against one another.
C. A. Conrad is an American poet, professor, and the author of seven books. They were based in Philadelphia and later Asheville, North Carolina and Athens, Georgia.
The College Union Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) is an annual Poetry Slam tournament put on by the Association of College Unions International (ACUI) in which teams of four or five college students from different colleges and universities compete against each other. Its location changes every year.
Stacey Waite is a poet—focusing on both slam and written verse—who also works as an Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Waite's poetry often explores themes of the body—of the intersections of gender, sexuality, place and relationships. She has published four collections of poetry over the past several years.
Kevin Coval is an American poet.
Rudy K. Francisco is an American spoken word poet and author. He has won several Poetry Slams and written six books of poetry: Getting Stitches, Scratch, No Gravity, No Gravity Part II, Helium, and I'll Fly Away. He made an appearance on TV One's Verses and Flow and performed his spoken-word poem "Complainers" as well as "Rifle" on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
José Olivarez is an author, poet and educator from Calumet City, Illinois, U.S. His first full collection of poetry is Citizen Illegal, published by Haymarket Books. Citizen Illegal was shortlisted for the $75,000 2019 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.
Malcolm London is an American poet, educator, "artivist" and musician. He is one of three artists on the Billboard documentary piece, “Saving Chicago: Inside Hip-Hop's Movement to Make Chicago a Better Place”.
The National Youth Poet Laureate is a title held in the United States by a young person who demonstrates skill in the arts, particularly poetry and/or spoken word, is a strong leader, is committed to social justice, and is active in civic discourse and advocacy. It is a title awarded annually to one winner among five finalists, most of whom have been chosen as the Poet Laureate for their city or region.
