FAQ

A poetry slam is a competition invented in the 1980s by a Chicago construction worker named Marc Smith. The Show-Me Poetry Slam is organized in a rotation of 3 rounds. In each round each poet has 3 minutes to share their original work.

The poetry slam is judged by 3-5 volunteering members of the community. The first place poet receives $50 and the second place poet receives $20. The third place poet is recognized with the winners.

Each poetry slam is capped at 12 performers. We would love there to be more performers but the venue closes at 9 PM. Therefore, if you want to compete it is a good idea to arrive when the doors open at 6 and get your name on the list.

All 12 performers compete in round one. The top six performers from round one move on to round two and the top two performers from round two move on to round three.

We get it! Public speaking is vulnerable and even more so when you are giving someone a glimpse into your soul through a poem. We love to hear your work and everyone (leadership, judges, and audience) are rooting for you!

The order poets perform in is randomized before each slam but we have a sacrificial poet go first so that none of the competing poets have to be the first to take the stage.

That is perfectly okay! It is fine to read from a journal, sheet of paper, your phone, a tablet, a napkin, etc.

Props are not allowed to be used during a performance.

With the exception of the October poetry slam (in observance of Halloween), costumes are not allowed during a performance.

If you have a question if something is considered a prop or a costume, please ask a member of the leadership team.

Putting a time limit on art isn’t fair but we are bound by the constraints of linear time and closing time at the venue. Therefore all poets will have a time limit of three minutes. There is a 10 second grace period, after which a .5 point time penalty is applied for every 10 seconds a poet goes over three minutes.

We will let a poet perform for 5 minutes but then we have to enforce our time constraints. We do this by squeaking a rubber chicken at the performer and ask that they respect the time limit and leave the stage as soon as possible.

Judges are 3-5 people from the community that volunteer to judge the performance. The only qualification is that the judge is not closely affiliated with any of the performers.

Judges do not have to do anything but write down a score on a whiteboard and hold it up for the hosts to see after each poet performers. No public speaking involved, and you get in for $5!

Each poet has 3 minutes to perform an original piece of poetry. Judges judge by the criteria they find meaningful to them. Some criteria we suggest they may want to evaluate is: performance, content, and originality.

Poems are scored from 0 – 10, but we ask judges not to score any poems below a 6 unless they feel it is necessary.

Judges are asked to use a whole number between 1 and 10 followed by one to two decimal values in order to reduce the chances of a tie.

If there are 5 judges, we drop the highest and lowest score from the final score. If there are 4 judges, we drop the lowest score from the final score.

Ocassionally two or more poets will receive the exact same score during a round. At the end of the round if that tie affects a poet that will affect to the next round we have a method to break the tie.

We add together the lowest and highest score for each poet that tied and whichever poet has the highest tiebreaker score is ranked first in the tie.