"If words were my Language…" - Poetry Slam in Europa
Take a stage, a lingophile audience and yet enthusiastic lingophile and ideally -skilled poetry slamer and let them talk, gasp or whisper in a city like Berlin, Oslo or Marburg. The result is a poetry slam or prosaically expressed: A literary lecture competition. About the charm of poetry slams, and why these are anything but sober:
"S" for: self-dramatization, self-written or in short: (Poetry) Slam
There are slam poets such as Julia Engelmann, Marc-Uwe Kling or Sebastian23 juggling with words and thoughts, playing with verses and experimenting with sounds. Whether a train ride through Germany, miserable procrastination or philosophical conversations with an imaginary kangaroo: The variety of themes is unlimited. However, the timeout is not. The rules of poetry slams are simple and catchy - even for newbies of the scene. The texts must be self-written and the aforementioned timeout is limited to five minutes. However, verbal acrobats cannot use props, musical instruments and costumes. What counts here, is voice, content and of course, a real sense for self-dramatization.
Audience names winners
Therefore, the poetry slamers compete against each other in the course of the evening. The audience chooses the winner by volume of gossiping or a jury. What sounds new or "modern", is actually not if you consider it like this. Actually, the roots of poetry slam already date back to the minstrel contest on the Wartburg in the 13th century.
Poetry slam or "slamming seal"
The movement of poetry slam going out from Chicago has made a remarkable diffusion since the 1980s. Although the German poetry slam scene next to the English-speaking one can be considered as the second-largest, one juggles with words as fanatical as diligently in other parts of Europe, and "slammed" (="slam") in a critical way.
Poetry slam in Europe
Denmark, France, Portugal, Spain, Great Britain and the Balkans are famous for their poetry slam scene. In Italy at the International Poetry Slam in Bolzano, opposed to the generally monolingual hold style, also texts in German, English and Italian resound.
Sweden also indulges itself in poetry slam. However, here the poets only have a presentation time of three minutes.
Poetry slam in Swedish
In Sweden subdisciplines developed in addition to the "classic" poetry slam. Therefore, at Flash Slams the artists only remain a half to one minute time to perform their sound poetry, rhetoric and free verses by heart. Also very popular: the knockout poetry slam, at which one competes against each other during two rounds, and the improesi slam. Here the artists can improvise with words that are projected on the wall and express their spontaneous thoughts.
