Just under six miles away from Chicago’s Green Mill Jazz Club, the birthplace of poetry slams, the Slam Society gives Northwestern’s poets a place to perform their art. The requirements?
“If you smoke thin black cigarettes and reject your god,” said executive member and Weinberg sophomore Katie Bock.
She’s kidding. Contrary to what the Slam Society jokes is the stereotype of a slam poet – black clothes, black coffee, haltingly rhythmic voice – Bock said poetry is “just about getting people to feel things.”
Formed last fall, the Slam Society brings the spirit of Chicago’s slam scene to NU, said founder and Weinberg senior Zack Moy.
“The reason it was first created is that we have all of these people who have these abilities walking around campus, but there’s no place to do it,” Moy said.
Most slam clubs in Chicago are only open to those 21 and older, Moy said.
“Chicago is just filthy with really successful poets and so our purpose is to bridge those two worlds,” Weinberg sophomore Maryam Adamu said.
Adamu, another executive member, emphasized the importance of slam poetry as a form of storytelling.
Since its birth, the Slam Society has promoted what Moy termed “flash mob poetry,” performances across campus organized on Facebook or through the club’s e-mail list.
“We had this idea of poetry happening everywhere and anywhere, whenever we felt it was necessary,” Moy said. “Just anywhere for people to show up, some poets to go up and read their thing, and then we disperse.”
In the past, the Society has held “flash mob” open mics at the Norris University Center, the Rock, the Shakespeare Garden, Crowe Café and outside of Annie May Swift Hall, Moy said. Students interested in reading were encouraged to sign up online, although at the end of each gathering the Society allowed anyone to perform.
“We said you could read your favorite (poem), you could read Dr. Seuss, you could read Soulja Boy,” Moy said. “You could read whatever the hell you wanted as long as you read it like a performance poem. So if you want to read a letter that your principal wrote to you in second grade, that’s fine.”
Although these open mics were the Slam Society’s main events last year, the group also hosted Open Up, a series of writing workshops taught by Chicago poets, during Spring Quarter.
In addition, the group hosts workshops and slams, or competitions, throughout the year. This quarter, open mics will be held every third Thursday of the month, workshops every Sunday and one slam during reading week, Bock said. The Slam Society also intends to compete in the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational, a national competition for college-level slam poetry teams.
According to adviser and English professor Averill Curdy, the Slam Society’s open events provide students with the opportunity to explore their creative sides.
“I think it enriches the literary community on campus by adding a lot more voices,” Curdy said. “People who aren’t even necessarily involved in the creative writing program can find a way to express themselves.”
Just as Bock hopes students will look beyond the stereotypical poet, the Slam Society encourages writers to see more than the serious side of slam. Bock, for example, said she once wrote a poem complaining that her heavier friends ridicule her for being thin. Last year, Moy performed an “extremely crude and unrepeatable” piece during Sex Week.
Whatever the tone of their performances, the Slam Society asks students to write poems that reflect their thoughts and experiences. Adamu said she believes anyone who has “ever dwelled on anything” possesses the potential to create slam.
“If you’ve ever thought about anything for more than ten minutes, chances are it can be made into a poem,” she said. “Whether that be the creepers on the El, your situation here at school, your family life, any of that stuff. Even the most basic thing, like building a paper airplane, can become something much greater and lead you on a lot of different paths.”
