After years of distancing themselves from the term “poetry slam” in the hopes of gaining  mainstream “street cred” in the music industry or access to prestigious MFA programs, it looks like some former “spoken word artists” and proper poets are back to branding themselves as slammers.  Does this have something to do with a second round HBO productions focusing attention on a few lucky teens emerging from Youth Speaks Brave New Voices competition or could it be the dream (lust, desire, ambition) of performing at the White House for the Obama crew that has inspired a number of performance poets to re-embrace the moniker they once shunned as beneath their artistic and commercial stature. The P word is not known to boost recording sales and the S word is poison in the fine arts academies.

The chaff goes where the wind blows. One thing that will be interesting to witness and record in the upcoming months is whether the Chicago nurtured Obama adminstration recruits any Chicago based performance poets and organizers to program and stage their “edgy” White House poetry slams. (There’s a bit of history that indicates they should.) Or will former coastal slammers turned spoken word artists turned back into slammers get all the kuddos? Stayed tuned.