Growing up in Albuquerque, NM, I was immersed in slam poetry and spoken word without ever really noticing it. Most area high schools had teams, and the competition was fierce. The city government sponsored a program for aspiring poets than tended toward spoken word and performance-based poetry, and I sat in on a few of their meetings over the summer. I watched Def Poetry Jam as a preteen and was entranced by Mayda del Valle’s poems about her heritage and childhood in Chicago—and became even more entranced when I saw her perform in a packed auditorium last December. Carlos Contreras, a Burqueño slam poet, gave me a chapbook of his poems. While I think I might be a little more interested in slam that the average person, even in my own community, I had assumed that regular contact with slam poetry was a somewhat universal experience.

So I was taken aback by the weak presence of spoken word when I arrived at Yale. I saw booths for students interested in performing poetry at the activities bazaar, but have since heard very little information about performances and other activities aimed at interested spectators. However, though you may not know it, spoken word poetry does exist at Yale, in the form of groups like Teeth Poetry and WORD, two offshoots of this burgeoning, nationwide phenomenon.

Slam poetry was created by construction worker and amateur poet, Marc Smith, in 1984. He corralled his friends into the Green Mile Cocktail Lounge in Chicago, liquored them up, and handed them a set of scorecards. He figured that by turning poetry into a competitive sport, he would be able to captivate a larger audience. Smith’s idea was successful—he still runs a weekly poetry slam and open-mic night. He wanted to give voice to a poetry counterculture, one that praises interactions and collaboration between poets and sees skill of performance as important as quality of writing. Slam poetry is also a response to what some perceive as the stuffier aspects of poetry because it pushes against a centralized academia as the arbiters of poetic merit and gives voice to minorities who have usually been left out of traditional literature. It prizes an ability to connect with audiences regardless of education or pedigree. This poetic populism makes poetry slams appealing to people from many backgrounds, even those without a previous interest in poetry.

Poetry slam and spoken word did not, however, gain mainstream acceptance and popularity until 2001 when hip-hop media mogul Russell Simmons debuted Def Poetry Jam, a television program on HBO devoted to spoken word and modeled after Simmons’s hit comedy program Def Comedy. The show featured artists who were professional poets, young people who were recently successful in national slam competitions, and popular recording artists and rappers performing poetry they had written.

Mos Def, a rapper and critically acclaimed actor, hosted the program for the six years that it aired. He was an apt choice for host because his brand of socially conscious rap and the ideas that he espouses mirror those taken up in spoken word—namely, identity, humanity, and social justice. Although Def Poetry Jam was not a poetry slam, it featured many poets who were successful in slams, like Mayda del Valle, Staceyann Chin, Alix Olson, Big Poppa E, and Rives. It also served to legitimize spoken word to pop culture audiences by allowing slam poets to share a stage with mainstream artists like Kanye West, Erykah Badu, Saul Williams, Common, John Legend, and George Clinton.

Poetry slams have made it far in the mainstream. There are slams for high school students in practically every state, and last year, it was officially recognized as a varsity sport in New York City Public Schools in an attempt to make literature more exciting to teens. Poetry Slam Inc. holds many slams every year, like the National Poetry Slam (where cities send small delegations to compete for the national title), the College National Poetry Slam, the Individual World Poetry Slam, and the Women of the World Poetry Slam. President Obama even invited successful slam poets into the White House for a poetry jam in May, 2009.

In order to fully understand spoken word at Yale, a fundamental distinction must be made. “Spoken word” is the name given to the entire genre of poetry intended to be performed rather than read, while a “poetry slam” is an event where performers of spoken word gather to compete in front of an audience. Colloquially, the terms are similar—they can be used interchangeably to describe an ethos or mood. Functionally, however, the terms are very different.

There are three spoken word groups on campus, each affiliated with a cultural house: WORD, affiliated with the Afro-American Cultural Center; Jook Songs, affiliated with the Asian American Cultural Center; and ¡Oye!, affiliated with La Casa. None of these groups are slam poetry groups because they perform, but they do not engage in competition. Luke Bradford, DC ’12, a member of WORD, indicated that “it’s really welcoming, especially WORD, because there’s a huge diversity of styles. There’s one guy in our group and all of his poems are about mythology.” These groups have certainly found success at Yale: WORD, ¡Oye!, and Jook Songs performances routinely take place in front of full houses, comprised of “80 to 100 audience members” according to Bradford.

Some spoken word poets, however, relish the competition and interaction that comes out of poetry slams. A sophomore who performs under the name “Amaya” was one of those poets, and she found the scene at Yale sorely lacking when she arrived as a freshman. After a summer spent competing in slams in New York City, she decided to start a campus group with the goal of performing in regional and national college slams. “I just wanted a group of people to write with,” she said. And so Teeth, Yale’s only slam poetry organization, was born.

Asked about the competitive nature that separates slam poetry from spoken word, Amaya said, “The scoring is really a gimmick. It’s a gimmick to get people there, to make it a fun, loose, easygoing environment. I’m more interested in meeting other poets and getting some of the feedback and cross-fertilization of ideas that can only happen at a slam.”

Though Teeth is still in its fledgling stages with only six members, the group has high hopes for the year. They are planning to hold open-mic and open slam sessions for the Yale and New Haven community. The first such event in November will feature the current National Adult Slam Champion, Sierra DeMulder.

Will Teeth be able to build a slam community in Yale? It seems that they might be fighting against an institutional culture in academia that seems to find fault in slam poetry’s more populist leanings—critics say that participation by the audience undermines the quality of the poetry in question. In fact, the most famous academic critic of poetry slam finds his home at Yale. In a 1991 interview with the Paris Review, Sterling Professor of Humanities, Harold Bloom referred to poetry slam as “the death of art” because of its emphasis on audience participation. Slam poets responded to his statements with venom, one going so far as to call him an “old fuddy duddy dunder-head.” At the end of the day, however, poetry slam feeds on this academic criticism. It keeps the genre close to its subversive countercultural roots even as it gains mainstream success.

When asked to give advice to Yale students looking to begin writing and performing spoken word, Bradford advised, “Write a piece and put a lot of work into it. Hone your piece. Hone your performance. Try to bring something new to the table. Put work into it and be creative.”

Amaya stressed that “slam is not something you have to break into.” Open-mic nights are supposed to be comfortable spaces for experimenting with performing poetry in front of an audience. To start writing spoken word, Amaya advised, “Write and then perform it in front of a mirror, perform it in front of friends to see what it sounds like.” Poetry slam is an activity that allows you to call upon your unique life experiences and skill sets—whether they lie in acting, improv, singing, writing, or athletics—and express them creatively on this burgeoning scene.