Sin City is sending
A team of its best
To the land of the Rockies
For a poetry contest.
—By the "State of Nevada" staff, with apologies to real poets everywhere.
Clark County’s poet laureate Vogue Robinson and four other Las Vegas-area poets are heading to Denver in early August to compete as a team in the National Poetry Slam.
The competition, which draws upward of 70 of the country’s top slam poetry teams, is described by promoters as the “largest performance poetry event in the world.” Joining Southern Nevada's Battle Born Slam Team will be a squad from Reno, which is sending a team to the event for the first time.
The poets.org website describes a poetry slam as a “poetry competition in which poets perform original work alone or in teams before an audience. The work is judged as much on the manner and enthusiasm of its performance as its content or style.”
Robinson said slam poetry is less about the words than how they are spoken.
“There are people who do categorize slam poetry as a separate thing. For me, I write poems and then I read them outloud,” she said. “I think when you’re preparing for a slam, though, you take the time to pay attention to how you’re performing it; it’s usually more practiced.”
Along with her role on the Battle Born Slam Team and serving as poet laureate, Robinson is executive director of Poetry Promise, a nonprofit literary arts organization. It is raising funds to send the slam team to Denver.
Vogue Robinson, Clark County poet laureate; A.J. Moyer, fellow Battle Born Slam Team member
