Last Thursday I performed my two most recent poems at the Meadowlark for the monthly poetry slam. There were only five of us competing, and I went head-to-head haiku style for second place (and lost). But my third-place position apparently has me in the running for a slam next month in which will be a qualifying competition between 12 poets for spots on a slam team.
I don't feel like my work is really all that great at this point. Both poems I've been really excited about, but when I performed them, I didn't feel they were all that great. Maybe I was too excited about them? Maybe it stems from my searching for my slam voice, something I'll hit on in a second. Either way, I'm looking forward to next month. My goal isn't to make the team. It's to produce three poems that I can perform and feel good about no matter what the judges rate them. I'm more motivated to write than to win.
So in the next month, I want to produce three poems: one that tells a story, one that's random/humorous, one that paints a visual or emotional picture. The length of my pieces so far have been rather short in comparison to most, so I'm going to work on expounding more than I do usually. I've aimed for conciseness for so long that it's hard to break out of that. I don't think it was a bad goal, it just can't limit me from detailing and creating a situation.
What I'm having the most difficulty with is finding my performance voice. After I read my first poem, I asked my friend, Tonya, how it went. "You sounded a little angry," she said. I tried to adjust for the second, but it still came out too forceful. Last night we were talking more about this, and she said that I'm probably trying too hard to mimic other poets and how they perform.
Slam, from how I see it so far, revolves a lot around emphasizing rhythm. You aren't just reading, you're performing. It's like acting, except there are no props or backdrop. All you have to paint that picture are your voice and words. It boils down to finding the voice that represents me as a person, that reflects the tone in which I wrote the poem, and that sounds convincing and dynamic as you typically find in the slam style.
So here's to more writing and practicing in hopes of three strong end results by April 8!
The Voice of Slam
How I Write, or Manage Not To
Got some news. I've been published!
6S is a blog that challenges writers to see what they can write in six sentences. They announced a contest in January for writers to send in six sentences defining love. The idea rolled around in my head for weeks, and I didn't think of something until the day of the deadline. So late at night, I wrote my paragraph and sent it in, not sure if it would be accepted since it was an hour or so past the deadline.
Well I made it in! Now, there are two sides to this news. The positives are that it's always a good thing to be published, and when the video scrolls through the list of authors, my name happens to be second out of 60+ authors. That may not mean anything, but it still makes me happy. But the negatives are that I'm pretty sure anyone who submitted was published. I'm pretty sure 6S does this in hopes that those included will purchase the book, helping to fund their operation. All that would be fine—if I were happy with my submission. I'm not. It's a good idea, but wasn't executed well. The sentences don't flow so it's choppy, and I think it's a little cliche.
I'm going to show it to a few writing friends whose opinions I trust. Maybe if it isn't too horrible I'll post it later.
The same week, the 6S network e-mailed this short piece of advise to subscribers, and I'm trying to focus on learning lessons from even the bad writing that does happen and not letting it discourage me.
"How I Write, or Manage Not To" by Kate Cone
There is a story about Hemingway: a reporter asks him, "If it hurts so much to write, why do you do it?" Hemingway: "Because it hurts more not to."
I am working on establishing and maintaining a daily writing "practice," like my daily meditation practice. It took me decades to finally get the latter, so why not segue from meditation into writing? I am trying, and it's getting easier the more I do it. Julia Cameron, creator of The Artists' Way, says to give yourself permission to write badly, just write. That helps. When I sit down to write now, I acknowledge that it may be crap, but I have to start somewhere. And speaking of crap, Anne Lamott in her inspiring and gut-bustingly funny book about writing Bird by Bird, espouses writing "the shitty first draft." Crappy and shitty. I think I can DO that.
With the passing of J.D. Salinger, I continue to think, "It's now or never." Or, "If not now, when?" When Dr. Seuss died in the nineties, I was in a writer's group. I said to my friend, "Why bother. Fame and money don't make you immune from death. We'll all die eventually." But that brings me back to what Hemingway said. Whether we are famous or not, bestselling authors or authors who just squeak by financially, "it hurts more not to." Writing is a calling, and if I honor that by writing those detective novels I've been working on for twenty years, I'll be happier, crappy or not.
Now... who dunnit?
KATE CONE is a writer, cook, mom and Buddhist. This piece was originally posted in The 6S Social Network on January 28, 2010.
