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Thursday, December 20, 2001

By Bob Hoover, Post-Gazette Book Editor

Unusual sounds were coming from the library at Winchester Thurston School last week -- whistles, groans, thumps, cheers, obscenities.

Marc Smith, who credits himself with founding slam poetry, visited Winchester Thurston School to help students from there and Pittsburgh's Creative and Performing Arts High School train for national competition. (V.W.H. Campbell Jr, Post-Gazette)

It was a poetry class.

OK, it was a slam poetry class.

Part literature, part theater, part competition and all attitude, slam is spreading from its urban roots in smoky bars to colleges and secondary schools, including private ones such as Winchester in Shadyside.

But Winchester isn't entering this brave new world on its own; it's joined hands with Pittsburgh's Creative and Performing Arts High School and Sun Crumbs, the only honest-to-goodness licensed and certified slam operation in the state.

The goal is to field a team from the two schools for the Youth Poetry Slam Festival in Burlington, Vt., in April.

Nine students each from CAPA and Winchester started their team training last Wednesday, and they started at the top.

Mara Creeghan, head of CAPA's Literary Arts program, brought Elise Goldstein, Gillian Goldberg, Heather Jarrett, Linnea Robison, Mya Green, Brianna Dunleavy, Shalita Gray, Jamar Thrasher and Claire Schoyer to Winchester.

There they joined Ryan Jones, Tyler Filipak, Dan Gespass, Chelsea Jones, Ruth Tynen, Felise Dezen, Emily Cordes, Ben Schneider and Heather Garlan.

Their visiting teacher was the Godfather of Slam, Marc Smith, who offered a crash course in the art of outperforming your rhyming opponents.

Smith's accent is a dead giveaway -- he's from Chicago, city not only of broad shoulders, but poetry slams.

	An excerpt from Christina Springer's poetry slam repertoire: In the Image of Angels I never wanted to be fat, but When I was four, I wanted to be Black. Made Angela Davis fists in the back seat at cars stuck behind us at traffic lights, just like my Mama showed me when I told her I was White

e takes the credit for starting this orphan stepchild of the classic poetry reading there in 1987 at the legendary North Side jazz club the Green Mill, where it continues to thrive on Sunday nights.

Smith's now a published poet and a polished performer, with gigs at Washington's Kennedy Center and Chicago's Art Institute.

"I'm Marc Smith," he introduced himself, to which the students, at his cue, responded, "So what?"

It's the traditional slam greeting, he explained, because "we're here to serve the community and have fun, not to glorify ourselves."

"Before slam started, poetry readings were stuffy, pretentious things and nobody outside the field even bothered to show up," Smith said. "Then the slams changed everybody's preconception of how poetry should be presented."

A wiry intense guy, Smith launched his class with a demonstration of his training as a former construction worker by pushing tables and chairs around.

"Slam poetry changed the form of poetry, so let's change the form of this room around," he said, knocking over a chair in the process and sending students scurrying to take more informal positions.

For more than an hour, Smith spouted poetry, cajoled, flirted, challenged and sweated in running the students through a series of exercises.

"The first thing you gotta do is engage your audience. Get their attention," Smith said. He started with the volume control as in loud and louder.

His students shouted the line "Sittin' in the bathroom, poopin' on your soul," as loud as they could. Smith awarded the loudest $5.

They said the line "In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo" as fast as they could.

They spoke in stage whispers; they spoke slowly like a recording played at the wrong speed.

Other exercises worked on movement and character. One student read her poetry portraying a llama; another was a 3-year-old girl in Afghanistan; another did a great impression of Richard Nixon discussing the Ninja Turtles.

In the world of slam poetry, performance matters as much as the words. "It's all about entertainment," said Smith, "and the stage is a wonderful place to be. It's your fantasy land. You can use the stage to go as far as you want, even too far."

And where these kids want to go is Burlington in April, site of the National Youth Poetry Slam. Only four -- two from each school -- will make it, though. Sun Crumbs' Christina Springer promises the competition to pick the four will be "fair and equitable."

Springer, herself a veteran of national adult competition, is a Winchester alumna who's been teaching slam poetry at her alma mater for four years.

"The school's been very supportive of our efforts, and Christina's had a lot to do with it," said Winchester teacher Debbie Reaves, who oversees the poetry instruction.

With its roots in the city club scene as well as its connection to rap, slam has gotten an unsavory reputation that's undeserved. Reaves sees the positive side.

"Rap music can take a lot of credit for interesting kids in the spoken word," she said. "And poetry is about words. You have to be able to communicate effectively. Anytime you can interest young people to pay attention to language, well, that's a good thing."