Slam Team Recording Party

The Vic Slam Team held their recording party last week as their first official show as the 2010 team, and as their first fundraiser, frankly rocked the house.

Matthew started the night out with some of his serious side, the Steve dropped a brand-new piece, Megan brought back some old favorites, Dave got dirty and sinful and Jeremy brought it home Canada.

The night was packed with talent, and a special thanks goes out to Gumshoe and the Banshee for gracing us with their haunting music. And HUGE props to the Victoria Events Centre for their support in donating the space (they've been a huge supporter of spoken word in this town).

And thanks to everyone who came out to the show - you can pick up your free CD at the Vic Slam Team's next appearance at Tongues of Fire on September 23.

And don't forget about the fourth (and maybe final?) Poetry in the Raw on September 27. It's the Victoria Slam Team's big fundraiser and word is some Van Slam Team members might join in the fun...

Missie Peters
2011 Slam Master

Introducing the 2010 Victoria Poetry Slam Team!

If you were there for Finals Night earlier this week, I don't have to tell you: the judges were stern, the atmosphere electric, the sweat copious and the poetry truly epic! And after two crushing rounds where it was, quite literally, anybodies game, four poets emerged triumphant to form the team that will represent our town at the National Slam this October in Ottawa! They are...

Dave Morris
Megan Ann Ward
Matthew Christopher Davidson
Jeremy Loveday and
Steven J Thompson (alternate)

Dave and Matthew were members of the 2009 team. Jeremy and Steven were on the 2008 team, but Jeremy had to drop out thanks to work commitments in Korea, so we are happy to see him on the team for another crack at the Nationals! And Megan! Megan was a tornado at Finals and a fresh new face for Victoria! She also ensures that the team is not a complete sausage festival. Thanks Megan!

Stay tuned to this space for more Vic Slam Team '10 news, upcoming shows and fundraisers, and watch the fazboog for the Team group/fan/like/whatever page... who knows what they're doing over there on the fazboog, anyway? Seems they can't make up their collective mind. Still! The '10 Team will be there. Join them!

Below please find complete scoring for all three rounds of the Finals, as compiled by official scorekeeper Sasha Prynn and timekeeper Cameron Lauder.

* * * * *
-- 10 poets competing, 3 lowest scoring competitors dropped from each round, cumulative scoring across three rounds, team decided from round two with third round "glory round" to decide champion...


Round One

Dave Morris -- 27
Megan Ann Ward -- 25.4
Steven J Thompson -- 25.4 with a time of 3m23s penalty = 24.4
Jennifer Jones -- 24.4
MCD -- 24.3
Jeremy Loveday -- 23.9
Kristy Westendorp -- 23.3
Jane Bee -- 23.1 /CUT/
Wes Lord -- 22.8 /CUT/
Derek Ford -- 21.7 /CUT/


Round Two

MCD -- 27.4 with a time of 3m18s penalty = 26.9
Jeremy Loveday -- 26.9
Dave Morris -- 26.3
Megan Ann Ward -- 26.8 with a time of 3m24s penalty = 25.3
Kristy Westendorp -- 25.5
Steven J Thompson -- 25.2
Jennifer Jones -- 25.0

Cumulative Scoring to decide 4 team members plus alternate as follows...

Dave Morris -- 27 + 26.3 = 53.3
MCD -- 24.3 + 26.9 = 51.2
Jeremy Loveday -- 23.9 + 26.9 = 50.8
Megan Ann Ward -- 25.4 + 25.3 = 50.7
Steven J Thompson -- 24.4 + 25.2 = 49.6 /alternate/
Jennifer Jones -- 24.4 + 25 = 49.4 /CUT/
Kristy Westendorp -- 23.3 + 25.5 = 48.8 /CUT/


Round Three -- Glory Round to decide Champion!

Jeremy Loveday -- 27.8 with a time of 3m54s penalty = 25.3
MCD -- 26.8 with a time of 3m32s penalty = 25.3
Megan Ann Ward -- 26.5
Dave Morris -- 26.2

Cumulative Scoring across all three rounds to decide Champion and ranking as follows...

Dave Morris -- 27 + 26.3 + 26.2 = 79.5 CHAMPION
Megan Ann Ward -- 25.4 + 25.3 + 26.5 = 77.2 SECOND
MCD -- 24.3 + 26.9 + 25.3 = 76.5 THIRD
Jeremy Loveday -- 23.9 + 26.9 + 25.3 = 76.1 FOURTH

Applaud the poets and their poetry, not the scores (which are, after all, arbitrary and somewhat random... yes, it's a flawed system, but like many flawed things in this world, it does carry within it a seed of beauty... *ahem*) ... Thanks to all the poets, the judges, the volunteers and of course, the audience! See you next season!

The Finals...

Hello! Well, it's all come down to this, folks. The finals. THE FINALS! The last slam of the season and the slam that decides the Victoria team for 2010, who will represent our town at the National Slam, held this year in Ottawa during the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in October.


CRITERIA FOR SELECTION

a) if a poet placed first or second during a second round at any slam, they qualified for finals...
b) due to a low turnout of poets during the first 3 months of the slam (Jan-March), it was decided that if a poet got into the second round at any slam, they also qualified for finals...


FINALS CONTESTANTS

In descending order, from highest scoring to lowest, the poets who qualified to compete in the finals are as follows:

Jeremy Loveday
Justin Illien
Dave Morris
Megan Ann Ward
Jen Jones
Jane Bee
Kristy Westendorp
Steven J Thompson
Matthew Christopher Davidson
Derek Ford
Brad B
Garth von Buchholz
Wes Lord

Contestants will be contacted and informed of the rules, as well as the responsibilities and requirements that membership on the Slam Team entails.


FINALS FORMAT

The finals decide the Victoria Slam Team for 2010. That's four poets, plus one alternate.

First Round

12 poets - random order

Second Round

Top 8 poets - random order

Third Round (bonus round to decide "champion")

Top 4 poets - random order

The alternate will be the fifth ranked poet coming out of the second round.

FINALS RULES

A competing poet may use all and any original work, including any piece(s) they have slammed with during the regular season.


That's it for now from all of us here at VicSlam Central! See you out on June 8 for one of the best nights of spoken word on the Island! 'S gonna be a heartbreaker!

Slam Scores for May!

Well damn, son. Another 11 poets competed last night at VicSlam and with the randomly selected judges proving themselves both brutal and consistent, the competition was tight! The show was so exciting, in fact, that the host became moderately flustered; the feature Electric Jon was a pleasantly schizophrenic whirlwind of sound n fury; and the top performers walked away with outmoded entertainment media storage devices (movies on VHS tapes! Score!). Here are the top 5 poets who made it into the second round, in order of their awesomeness.

1st place: Jane Bee 54.9
2nd place: Jeremy Loveday 52.7
3rd place: Matthew Christopher Davidson 51.3
4th place: Dave Morris 48.2
5th place: Garth von Buchholz 48.0

Over the next few days, we will be crunching ALL the numbers from the season and compiling the list of performers for the Finals in June. Watch this space for that and other VicSlam related goodness!

Slam Scores for the Season So Far!

Hello all. Skawt here, with the scores for the current season of Vic Slam! As you may know already, we are only one slam away from the Finals. Basically it's the May Edition and then in June, the Finals. That's it. Two more slams. Goes fast, don't it? So, in the interest of re-establishing some kinda current feel to the blog (we know it's been sketchy lately, update-wise and for that, our apologies) and to foster a degree of excitement in competitors and audience alike, here, quite literally, is the score(s)...

VIC SLAM

January Edition
Jeremy Loveday: 55.5
Jane Bee: 55.2
Dave Morris: 53.9
Justin Illien: 53.2
Jen Jones: 53.0

February Edition
Kristy Westendorp: 55.9
Steve Thompson: 52.6
Megan Ann Ward: 52.1
Brad B.: 48.7
Jen Jones: 46.9

March Edition
Dave Morris: 52.0
Jeremy Loveday: 50.6
Justin Illien: 50.6
Megan Ann Ward: 49.8
Jen Jones: 44.0

April Edition
Dave Morris: 53.4
Justin Illien: 50.8
Megan Ann Ward: 50.4
Derek Ford: 49.7
Wes Lord: 47.6

For the Finals in June, placement will be established in this manner: if during the regular season (January through May) you took either first or second place at any slam, you will be in the Finals. However, considering the relatively low turn-out of competing poets and the dominating juggernaut that is a few of those poets (looking in your direction Morris, Loveday, etc.), this will likely not give us the 12 competitors we need for Finals. So, to fill out the competition, we will then be ranking poets according to their accumulated scores over the season.

Questions, comments, concerns?
Feel free to hit us up wit dat via electronic mail!
tonguesoffire@shaw.ca

Rules

1 ) Poems can be on any subject and in any style.

2 ) Each poet must perform work that s/he has created.

3 ) No props. Prop: an object or article of clothing introduced into a performance with the effect of enhancing, illustrating, underscoring, or otherwise augmenting the words of the poem. Generally, poets are allowed to use their given environment and the accoutrements it offers - microphones, mic stands, the stage itself, chairs on stage, a table or bar top, the aisle - as long as these accoutrements are available to other competitors as well. The rule concerning props is not intended to squelch the spontaneity, unpredictability, or on-the-fly choreography that people love about the slam; its intent is to keep the focus on the words rather than objects.

4 ) No musical instruments or pre-recorded music.

5 ) No costumes.

6 ) Sampling: It is acceptable for a poet to incorporate, imitate, or otherwise "signify" on the words, lyrics, or tune of someone else (commonly called "sampling" in his own work. If he is only riffing off another's words, he should expect only healthy controversy; if on the other hand, he is ripping off their words, he should expect scornful contumely.

7 ) The Three-Minute Rule: No performance should last longer than three minutes. The time begins when the performance begins, which may well be before the first utterance is made. A poet is certainly allowed several full seconds to adjust the microphone and get settled & ready, but as soon as s/he makes a connection with the audience ("Hey look, she's been standing there for 10 seconds and hasn't even moved"), the timekeeper can start the clock. The poet does not have an unlimited amount of "mime time." Poets with ambiguous beginnings & endings to their performances should seek out the timekeeper at each venue to settle on a starting & ending time. After three minutes, there is a 10-second grace period (up to and including 3:10.00). Starting at 3:10.01, a penalty is automatically deducted from each poet's overall score according to the following schedule:

3:10 and under no penalty

3:10.01 - 3:20 -0.5

3:20.01 - 3:30 -1.0

3:30.01 - 3:40 -1.5

3:40.01 - 3:50 -2.0

and so on [-0.5 for every 10 seconds over 3:10]

The announcement of the time penalty will be made by the emcee or scorekeeper after all the judges have reported their scores. The judges should not even be told that a poet went overtime until it is too late for them to adjust their scores.

Maximum Time Limit: After four minutes, only the emcee may stop a poet from continuing to perform.

8 ) Judging: All efforts shall be made to select five judges who will be fair. Once chosen, the judges will have a private, verbal crash course by the emcee or house manager on the do's and don'ts of poetry slam judging (where they can ask questions).

9 ) Scoring: The judges will give each poem a score from 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest or "perfect" score. They will be encouraged to use one decimal place in order to preclude the likelihood of a tie. Each poem will get five scores. The high and the low scores will be dropped and the remaining three scores will be added together.

10 ) Emcees: The emcee will announce to the audience each poet's name. She will also require that all judges hold their scores up at the same time and that no judge changes his score after it is up. She is expected to move the show along quickly and keep the audience engaged and interested in the competition. Since she must be completely impartial, any witty banter directed at individual poets, poems, teams, or scores is inappropriate. Even genuine enthusiasm has to be carefully directed. The safest thing to do is encourage the audience to express their own opinions.

11 ) Sacrificial Poet: Because no poet wants to go first in the slam, and because some judges, score keepers and time keepers need practice, each slam begins with a "sacrificial poet". This poet performs a piece and is scored as if they were competing in the slam.

12 ) Team Pieces: Any group of individuals who wish to do group pieces in the regular season or the summer season may do so. However, said group piece will receive a two point deduction from the poem’s total score and said group piece will not be used towards qualifying for finals at the end of the season.

Additionally, any individuals involved in a group piece is unable to compete in any other piece (be it group pieces or solo work) for that evening. Should the team performing said group piece make it to the 2nd round they would have to involve all the same group members in their 2nd round piece and would take the two point penalty in that round as well.

How the Victoria Slam Team is Chosen

If you are interested in qualifying for the Poetry Slam Finals you must place in the overall top 12 poets. The five top scoring poets at the finals night will become the Victoria Slam Team.

Victoria Poetry Slam Returns Early!

So last you heard we were going to be starting up regular slams in January.

Problem is, we couldn't wait till then! We're too excited about performance poetry and judging and being judged that there was just no way we we could hold off until after the holidays. So, for those of you who are as impatient as the rest of us we've thrown together a pretty wicked kick-off to the new poetry slam season. We're talking about a licensed venue, we're talking about a rowdy crowd, we're talking hilarious stand-up poet Mike McGee as feature. You like what you're hearing? (Hearing in this case can be substituted with the word reading.) Yes, you do. You actually love it. Ok, so first things first...who is Mike McGee? You don't know? Well we think you might be lying but we'll hook you up with his bio anyway. If reading about him isn't enough to get you out on a frosty December night you might want to check out some video of the man in action.

Alright, so now you're sold on the feature but don't forget there will also be local poets battling it out for supremacy and your job is to come out and let them know what you think. The audience is what Slam is all about so we need a good audience. Obviously, a good audience includes you so here are the details. Victoria Poetry Slam: Tuesday, December 15. Cabin 12 at 607 Pandora. (If Lower Johnson is the shopping district these days, we're turning lower Pandora into the poetry district!) Just $5 at the door. Doors will open at 7 for the show to kick off at 7:30. Come out and be prepared for awesome!