Michigan 1, or A Fool's Guide to Slam Poetry

I'm in Detroit for the Women of the World Poetry Slam , and I am like an excited puppy. Everything has so far run smoothly. I've run into many people I know, and have already made new friends from Delaware. My incredibly swanky hotel room has 12-foot ceilings, a clear view of the Detroit river, and a bathroom the size of my Smith bedroom (paid for by Smith College - thanks, guys!). Best of all, I think, I have no one to share it with, and thus have the privilege to choose with whom I share it.

For those of you following along at home, a poetry slam is a performance poetry (or "spoken word") competition in which poets perform their own original works on stage and are judged numerically by randomly selected audience members. More information can be found here.

Tonight is is the first preliminary bout. About 10 of us will perform in two rounds, in a completely random order. (In slam, it is a great advantage to go last rather than first, because scores tend to get higher as people get more and more excited.) I'll get to perform a 1-minute piece, and then a 4-minute piece. My scores will be added together, and I'll be given a rank between 1-10, depending on where my score falls in the spectrum of the others in my bout. The combined ranks (best rank = 2, worst rank = 20) and combined scores (best score = 60, worst score = 0) will determine when I perform in the second prelim bout. If I score low, they give me an extra boost by letting me go towards the end. If I score high, they challenge me by putting me towards the beginning. Still following? Good. Explain it to me.

Wish me luck!