where does the tradition of slam poetry come from
Poetry slam A poetry slam is a competition in which oral poets read or recite original work. Poetry slam began in Chicago in 1984 with its first competition designed to move poetry recitals from academia to a popular audience when American poet Marc Smith began experimenting with existing open microphone venues for poetry readings by making them competitive.[1] The performances at a poetry slam are judged by a panel of judges, typically five, and usually selected from the audience, or sometimes judged by audience response.[2] The judges usually give each poem a score on a scale of 0â€“10 (zero being the worst and ten being the best). The highest and lowest scores are dropped and the middle three are kept. The highest score one can receive is a 30 and the lowest one is a zero.