How One of Slam Poetry's Architects Became One of Its Biggest Enemies

At Literary Hub, read about Marc Smith, who founded the first performance poetry slam in the US (according to the article's author, Vangmayi Parakala) called the Uptown Poetry Slam, which has been held at Chicago's Green Mill Cocktail Lounge since 1984. "Outside the Green Mill," Parakala writes, "in the mainstream, competitive world of slam poetry, Smith has become Public Enemy No. 1." From there: 

In April 2017, the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI), one of the biggest national collegiate poetry competitions in the United States, had invited Smith to be the featured performer. In a year when the competition was being held in Chicago, the city that gave birth to the slam format, it was a no-brainer that the so-called “father” of the slam would be the guest of honor.

To say it didn’t go well would be an understatement. Smith, it seemed, decided to use this platform to tell a new generation of slam poets that he disapproved of the way they were treating his baby.

The first of the three poems he performed at CUPSI was called “Speaksters.” It expressed disdain towards the sort of poems being performed at spoken word contests:

All rise and bow and kneel
Another spokesman of mass appeal
Has hopped atop the concert stage
To open up his Holy Rage.

The audience was visibly uncomfortable, and a few stanzas in, some started walking out of the event. Local media outlets like The Chicago Defender would be quick to report on the incident.

The second poem, “Old White Guy Whitey” criticized a poet of color who’d called out Smith on his behavior at a private gathering. Smith was allegedly defending his identity—as a cis-gendered white man—and wanted to make a point about reverse racism:

Everyone laughed
It was funny.
Funny to be sitting there
Taking it.

It was the last poem that did him in. As he recited, a line of poets started forming a human chain at the foot of the stage. With their backs to Smith, they protested by crossing their arms in an X over their chests as he spoke about how those in “the third world” had real problems, while in “our comfortable homes,” we are “milking the repression of our easy existence, stirring . . . our still free voices into teacup whirlpools of angst and despair.” The poem was called “Detention Center.”

Continue reading at Literary Hub.