Kids in Albuquerque Public Schools are slamming their emotions instead of bottling them up.
Olivia Gatwood, UNM student and slam poet, works with youth in APS, teaching them about spoken-word poetry as well as her own experiences. She said her students are attracted to slam poetry because of its resemblance to rap and hip-hop.
“Normally when they hear poetry, they just think of another annoying school assignment that they’re not going to pass,” Gatwood said. “I think that a lot of kids never thought that their rapping or that their writing could be something considered valuable. It was always something that they just did in their notebooks.”
Gatwood said slam poetry allows students to find self-worth through verbally expressing their fears and emotions.
“They (students) have opinions and they have thoughts that they want to be able to say aloud,” she said. “I think sometimes for young kids, they don’t want to write it down because they don’t know where it’s going to go, or if it’s going to go anywhere, and it’s kind of just stuck inside of themselves, whereas slam poetry, all of these people are hearing it. I think a lot of kids find a lot of self worth in doing that, in having other people hear their opinions.”
Gatwood is one of eight slam poets slated to compete for the “Best Woman Slammer” title this Saturday at the Women of the World Poetry Slam.
Erin Northern, 2009 WOWPS champion, said the WOWPS offers female slam poets a venue through which to showcase their art.
“It’s a really beautiful event, because it’s women supporting women,”
Gatwood’s poetry coach, Aaron Cuffee, said the strongest poet is not always the clear-cut winner.
“It’s extremely rare that the game is fair,” he said. “Five random people are chosen and get to decide on a whim what’s best at any show.”
Gatwood said slam poetry is a field generally dominated by men, which makes the WOWPS a unique opportunity for female artists. She said she has wanted to participate in the event since she began slamming.
“Women of the World Poetry Slam is a really neat chance to see all the really good females in the state and watch them compete,” Gatwood said. “I think it’s assumed that women are on-page and that women stay on-page, in that they’re very poetic and soft in a kind of supple way. It’s the kind of poetry that you want to read, not the kind of poetry you want to hear.”
Slam poetry has fascinated Gatwood ever since she first heard it, she said.
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“I would pick out these lines, and I would become obsessed with these certain lyrics, these verses, and I had always been just infatuated with slam poetry every time I saw it,” Gatwood said, “I just wanted to hear it all the time.”
She soon transitioned to writing her own work, reading her first poems to her soccer team on the way to games. She said her poetry has since become an important means of expression for her.
“I always incorporate some sort of feminism into my writing just because I feel like I’m thinking about that all the time, and there’s no way that I can’t write about it,” Gatwood said.
Cuffee believes that slam poetry is an important form of expression as a public forum.
“It’s one of the few areas of expression in a live atmosphere that we have left without any filter,” he said. “At a slam, anyone can come with whatever it is that they want to say.”
Women of the World Poetry Slam
Saturday, 7:30 p.m.
Outpost Performance Space
General Admission $10, Members and Students $5
