What an enormous privilege to have a top seat for the Going West poetry slam finals, as part of the judging panel, along with Shane Hollands, and Grace Taylor.
Thankyou Michelle Durey for inviting me, and thanks to the other organizers for having us there, and much respect Michelle for managing a poetry event that saw the poetry scene in Auckland buzzing for weeks, and the Titirangi War Memorial Hall, packed, with extra chairs being brought in to seat all the guests. It was commented on frequently that our job would be hard, and it certainly was, but very exciting. The thing is there were such talented word smiths and performers in the final rounds, all taking their own personal voice and style to a high level of well practiced intensity, FULL ON!
All the semi finalists are astounding performers, and many of those who didn't make the finals for slam are dedicated beautiful wordsmiths as well and I am anticipating furtherance of poetic crossover and show for seasons to come, as this has set a precedence in bringing our diverse poetry groups together.
The performers were judged in categories for different aspects of their work: content, delivery, and audience response. But ultimately within these there had to be an instinctive response that breaks it down even further. The audience was fully engaged, and entertained, laughing / crying and shouting and roused by the spirited performances of contestants. I would say some of the aspects of the work that made the difference in choosing our winners were probably the ability to package and shape both the performances and the writing with a complex fabric of engagement. In writing : heartfelt clever circuitous concepts, and the management of details but also with a broader perspective. So the oratory skills of focussing in- to the detail and then zooming out to the issues, was manifested with some amazing craft. Elements of surprise and reveal, (the 'you though this poem was about that, but now it's actually this as well...' thing), and in performance: beyond being absolutely present, being able to pull back a little and push forward a little, without losing the connectivity with the crowd is a great stage skill, and while not all winning slam poets need to be super fast talkers, risking the woven fabric of super fast talking while keeping thematically engaged is also simply technically impressive, and knowing when to slow without losing height, leaves us gliding but most of all, if there was anything that I had to go by at the last second, it wasn't the forgetting of a word, or a stumble, or the fact that a whole sentence came out like ghzushinnyouprrivodmir with spit flying around, or a desire to push one theme over another.. There was one thing that was key for me to judge a bit further in, and that was the 'poetry / the craft of aligning one word against another/ and juxtaposing for intent in that refined place on the inside of your poems, within the way you talk, and the ideas you have, the vitality in lyricism which comes from the reaching for language that makes new language, and the intricate placement of it which builds the fabric that you use then to build the work.
Once again, thankyou all the poets I saw performing last night, for taking your voices/ our voices and bringing them into play with such ferocity velocity and spirit, you were all amazing.
XGenevieve.
