Discovering Denver Slam: A Micro-Documentary

Hi, followers. If you were not already aware, this blog has been a semester-long assignment for my Multimedia Composition class at the University of Colorado Denver. For the past month, I have been working on my final project for this class, a micro-documentary on a subject that fits into Vers Denver’s theme. I chose to create a brief documentary that explores slam poetry in Denver.

My chosen venue for exploration was the Mercury Cafe, which hosts a weekly poetry slam every Sunday night at 8 PM. For as long as I have lived in Denver, I had been curious about the slam scene and this assignment was finally my excuse to check it out.

I met incredible people at the slam and witnessed poets with incredible bravery who shared huge pieces of themselves with the audience. Learning about the community of slam poetry was a very rewarding experience and I hope to post more about it in the future.

For now, you can view my micro-documentary here.

 

Slam at the Mercury Cafe

I finally had enough free time this Sunday to head to the Mercury Cafe and check out the weekly poetry slam and a bit of the open mic before the slam, which they cleverly call the “Jam Before the Slam.” It was my first time there after being told to check it out for as long as I’ve been attending school down here. As any of my fellow college students know, this is a busy busy time of year, so this was squeeezed into my schedule pretty tight between work and homework, but I’d say it was worth it.

I went alone, which was a bit intimidating. I sat outside for a moment and saw groups of friends going in together, looking like they attended the slam fairly often. When I went into the cafe, I had to ask someone where to go for the slam. A nice fellow at the bar accurately told me, “Just walk through the curtains and you will behold the world of slam.”

I went in just in time to see the last two poets read for the open mic, which is accompanied by a band. I asked someone about how the poets and the band stay in sync and a member of the audience told me that the poets just tell the band what kind of feel they’re going for and the band complies. I thought that was really cool. At first when I was watching, I thought there was no way I’d be able to read with music accompanying me, but the fact that the band caters to the poet’s requests changed my mind a bit. It’s possible that every night is different, but I noticed that the poems read at the open mic were pretty spiritual and involved a lot of nature imagery.

At 8 o’ clock, the slam started. This particular night was the youth slam. Knowing this prior to arriving, I was surprised that the slam was still competitive, but the poets were still scored by random members of the audience and limited to three and a half minutes on stage before receiving point deductions. I’m familiar with the competition of slam, but I didn’t figure I’d see it at the youth slam. Despite the fact that the poets were competing, the audience was encouraging and while the scorers were expected to score accurately, they certainly didn’t score harshly. The hosts of the evening also made it a point to remind the audience how brave the poets were for getting on stage and sharing their personal work at all. I know I was struck by the poets’ bravery. They were obviously still learning and developing in their art, but their poems were deeply personal and reflected a great deal of work.

My favorite part of the evening was that I met very friendly people who were very willing to help me with a project I’m doing on slam poetry. As a man I met there said, “This is the friendliest group of people you’ll meet” and I agree. I felt very welcome and hope to go back again soon.

The Beats LOVED Denver

“who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes…” -from Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” (1955)

I had never read any of the Beats until I had to read Allen Ginsberg for my History of American Poetry class (I’m just too much of a classicist), so until recently I was completely unaware of the history Denver had with the interesting school of writers. It turns out that old pals Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsberg adored the mile-high city.

You could make a whole day of visiting some of the writers’ favorite spots. In fact, Denver.org features an itinerary for a Denver beat poetry tour entitled Denver’s Beat Legacy. If you’re going to visit anywhere, though, definitely visit My Brother’s Bar: Kerouac, Cassady, and Ginsberg’s favorite place to eat and drink together. On the bar wall you’ll even find the original letter written by Cassady, asking the recipient to pay his tab while he was he was in jail for stealing cars. I’ll be 21 next month, so I’ll let you know how it is when I visit!

Looking through the itinerary, you’ll probably find that you’ve unknowingly stood in the same place as one of the Beats. Denver-born Cassady used to frequent the dives that once lined Larimer Square. If you’ve ever ventured into REI, you’ve entered what Cassady knew as the 1901 Denver Tramway building. Or, if you’ve ever seen a show at Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom, then you’ve heard live music in the same spot that Kerouac and Cassady listened to live jazz. To them, Five Points was “the Harlem of the West.”

The Allstate Blog provides even more spots to visit like the Colburn Hotel, where Cassady met his second wife (maybe it’s good luck on a first date!) and Charlie Brown’s Bar and Grill, another spot that Kerouac, Cassady, and Ginsberg loved.

And for you Kerouac fans, fear not. In 2011, graffiti artists tagged sites in Denver that Kerouac visited and chronicled them on their blog Jack Was Here. Mind you, this was years ago, so I can’t say for sure that any of the graffiti is intact to this day, but the blog provides a nice scavenger hunt. Tell me if you find Jack’s likeness spray-painted anywhere!

These are the kinds of things I love learning. I love visiting places where you can sense the significance of the setting, where you can feel the history. But it’s always funny when you’ve been somewhere many times and then you find out how special that place is. I think the Beats would definitely still love Denver today (especially for the legalized marijuana).

The Denver Poetry Map

During some light research on Denver poetry, I discovered the incredible Denver Poetry Map. The map offers a new way of experiencing Denver by providing a poem for various points in the city. The poems are written by front range poets and artists and a few poets just passing through. Aaron Angello, the editor and curator of the magnificent map, stresses that the poems are less about describing points on the map and more about offering each poet’s impression of these points. The map is meant to offer new understandings of the places in our city that we thought we knew well already. I think it definitely succeeds.

When I discovered the map, I started by reading poems for places I felt I knew well: The Museum of Contemporary Art where my good friend works, a street corner I frequently meet my boyfriend on so we can have a rushed dinner together between class and work, a block I’ve walked on while sipping a Japanese soda on my way home from Sakura Square. I explored more by clicking random points on the map and discovered Erin Costello’s “Alive, as if for all this time,” the poem for the Denver International Airport, which especially resonated with me in its account of a feeling I find familiar in a place I’ve been to before.

The map does more than connect local poets to new readers. It connects different points and experiences in the city. Erin Costello felt at the Denver International Airport the same thing I had felt there years before discovering her poem. There is someone else who has occupied the same space I have and felt the same things. Conversely, there are even more people who have occupied the same spaces I have and felt very different things. The poems are grounded in their specific places on the map so we can recognize that these things really happened in our city, in places we may have been to. This isn’t a common way to experience poetry. In this way, the map allows the setting to speak for itself more than ever.

The map is truly amazing and I encourage any Denver poetry enthusiasts to explore it and experience it for themselves. And keep going back! The map promises to grow.