SHOULD SLAMS START ON TIME?

Early this year I began visiting slams throughout the Midwest, and more recently on tour out to California. My intent was to check on the growth and stature of the American apparition of the movement I started 25 years ago. Along the way I jotted down impressions, thoughts, praises, and criticisms about what I was experiencing. One distressing element noted was that many slams don’t start on time. In fact, some lumbered to life hours after the advertised moment of first spit.

Is this a good practice?

Not by my judgment. One of the failures of poetry readings in the ‘70s and ‘80s (before Chicago’s Uptown Poetry Slam changed the staid course of poetry events) was that none of them started on time and consequently extended late into the nighttime early morning, usually on a week night when most working folks couldn’t afford staying up past midnight to listen to self-indulgent poets rambling.

One of my absolutes at Green Mill was to start on time or close to it.

There is a tradition in theater (which I believe had something to do with train schedules in New York City) that curtain goes up at 8:08 or something like that. A musical overture filling the wait-time space as the late arrivals are seated.

I may have this all wrong but the point is that over the decades (and maybe the centuries) stage presentations have started as close to the advertised start time as possible. Why should poetry shows be any different?

The dire consequence for starting late is that newcomers (who expect shows to start when the fliers say they will) wait … and wait … and wait … and wait some more, all the while grumbling in their minds, “What the fuck is wrong with these people, these poets. Let’s go! Let’s go! My time is valuable. Don’t these people give a damn about that?”

Expectations rise … and rise … and rise. And when the slam finally does start it’s burdened with the task of overcoming the huge volcano of resentment fuming in the newcomers’ heads.

And of course, the way out is no better. Delaying a show places the endgame far beyond what’s reasonable.
Three hours is considered a breaking point for any stage presentation — theatrical, poetical, or even musical. Sure some festivals rock on day and night deep into the wee hours, but think back on the concerts and plays you’ve attend. Two or three hours is the standard.

Advertising a show for 8pm, not starting until 9:30 and then trudging on until 2 am to finish – Egads! Six hours! How many people eagerly sign up for six hours of anything, let alone six hours of amateur poetry presentation. You’d have to be thoroughly stoned to survive it, which maybe the organizers of such fiascos are.

Newcomers hardly ever return after being burnt out by delay, and most likely spread the word, “I tried that poetry slam thing and oh man! It started so late and ended so late I couldn’t hang with it. It’s not something I’d recommend to anyone.”

Slam organizers owe it to themselves and to the slam community in general to start shows on time. It’s one of the principles that helped the original show in Chicago (and the successful shows that followed it) thrive and continue to thrive garnering new audiences every month, every year, swelling the population of slam enthusiasts to numbers envied by other fine art disciplines.

If you find numbers dwindling at your slam, maybe you should get back its roots and start on time.