The ringing endorsement of a snap, the modest approval of an “mm-hmm,” the hearty affirmation of a clap and cheer. Get your reactions ready, because a kinetic style of poetry-as-performance is about to “slam” into Orlando.
Slam poetry — the art of enhanced storytelling and performed verse — is a creative discipline in which poets take to the stage, embodying their words through passionate and direct performance. Words are emphasized in cadence, diction and bodily flow.
Making its first visit this week to Orlando, Southern Fried Poetry Slam is a Southern-focused poetry festival offering almost a week’s worth of live slam poetry performances, writing workshops and open mics. Highlights of this year’s festival include a hip-hop/lyricist open mic, LGBTQIA+ open mic, Erotic Open Mic (steamy!), haiku “death match,” and African drumming and storytelling.
“We have something for everyone,” Blu Bailey, festival director, says. “Twenty events in five days, 200 poets, hundreds of poems, a million memories.”
With more than 32 teams and over 200 poets, there’s someone or something for all tastes. Poets from as far away as Jamaica are coming to Orlando to compete for $20,000 in prizes and to share their lives through spoken word.
The first slam poetry open mics were held in Chicago in the 1980s, far from the confines of academia (in a jazz club, in fact!) in an attempt to make poetry accessible and relevant to a new generation. Poets squared off against one another in ferocious and tongue-twisting competitions, and the format quickly spread around the country. Slam poetry has proven a durable and evergreen offshoot of poetics — with successive new generations embracing and expanding the performance lexicon since its late-20th-century beginnings.
The Southern Fried Slam Poetry festival is keeping this same creative medium vibrant and alive in the present day. The fest, founded by Allan Wolfe back in 1993, will celebrate its 34th year in Orlando, hosted by former Orlando Poet Laureate Shawn Welcome and Alex Gertis, founders of the Literary Arts Council of Central Florida.
“Bringing the 34th annual Southern Fried Poetry Slam festival to Orlando is not just an achievement,” Gertis says. “It’s a statement about who we are, what we’ve been building and what this city is capable of. And it’s just the beginning.”
This five-day festival is bringing rookie and veteran slammers together to showcase the current state of slam poetry.
The kickoff event happens Tuesday, June 9, in the historic town of Eatonville, a place with deep literary roots, home to Zora Neale Hurston, the famed Black writer and anthropologist. Starting the event in this city was the natural choice for the Southern Fried organizers.
“Eatonville is the first incorporated Black municipality in the United States,” Welcome says. “To open this festival there is an intentional act, honoring her legacy, centering Black storytelling, and rooting this weeklong celebration in the very soil it grew from.”
That night featuresAlana Jackson, Camara Gaither, Ayanna Albertson-Gay, Aretha Rodney-McDonald and Blu Bailey, a perfect kick-off for this week’s festivities.
“There is something about a woman who is unafraid to jump at the center, even to be … [the] sun. To these, I say, speak to us all day long,” Alana Jackson, artist and TEDx speaker, says of Hurston. “When we do find her, because once we do observe it, and once you can bear witness, we can no longer unsee that she, and that we, exist.”
From Wednesday through Saturday, June 10-13, poetry will be everywhere in Orlando, including the Orlando Public Library, CityArts, Denton Johnson Community Center, Tech Hub Orlando, JB Callahan Neighborhood Center, Doubletree by Hilton Orlando, Neveah Sushi & Thai Restaurant, Jenny’s Eat Drink Socialize, the Eatonville Branch Library, Embassy Suites by Hilton Orlando Downtown, Outpost Neighborhood Tavern and the Orlando Museum of Art. Each day will feature eight preliminary bouts, or rounds, for a total of 24 bouts.
The finals, happening Saturday, will see seasoned and novice slam performers alike strut their stuff, and the final rounds for the last competitors standing. Four finalists will be selected, and only one will emerge victorious.
Like the T-shirts say (see above), the poets are indeed coming here to Orlando. They’re coming from all over the world, because poetry is universal; it can be found everywhere and in everyone. The next poet, although you may not know it, very well could be you.
“What we do today is just a foundation for tomorrow,” Gertis says. “What starts here this week is just the beginning of a national literary capital based here in Central Florida.”
Tuesday-Saturday, June 9-13, various locations, southernfriedpoetryslam.com, $30-$95
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