Campus Events
WU-SLam’s fourth Grand Slam packs Edison
About 800 people gathered Friday night to see 10 student poets compete in the fourth annual Poetry Grand Slam.
In addition to the packed audience at Edison Theater, organizers said that about 150 people, many of them students who were unable to get seats or were studying abroad, tuned in to catch the show via live streaming.
Junior Pat Hollinger, who placed first, said the best part of the experience was the chance to perform for such an expansive audience.
“The best part about slamming is the soap box. The award is in the nine minutes of spotlight gifted to us by loving friends, new fans and distant family,” he said. “The judges’ scores are just accidents of fate.
“Being able to get my message out in an artistic form is sublime.”
The competition featured 10 competitors, each of whom read two poems in front of the packed audience and judging panel. The six students with the highest scores were given the chance to read a third poem, which the judges used to determine the winners.The Poetry Grand Slam is WU-SLam’s biggest performance of the year and is used to decide who moves onto compete at the national level. Five members of the club will be traveling to Ontario, Calif., from April 18-21 to compete in CUPSI—the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational—a national collegiate poetry slam held every year.
Normally, the top four contenders at the slam and a fifth member chosen by the group head to the national competition, but since there was a tie for fourth place this year, sophomore Josh Aiken said the group still has to figure out who it will be sending.
Aiken, WU-SLam’s vice president of human resources, placed third at this year’s competition.
“I would say the most meaningful [part] for me was seeing all the late nights and intense aspects of the work that goes into the slam come to fruition because a lot of people don’t know…the work that goes into rehearsing and writing,” he said. “It’s amazing to see people go up there and spill their guts out on stage and really expose themselves to the Washington University community.”
The 10 students taking part in the competition spent about 40 hours in a Gregg Seminar room rehearsing and preparing for the show over the two weeks leading up to the event.
“It’s an incredible amount of preparation,” Aiken said. “It’s as much writing and performing as much as [it is] the logistics of putting on a show at Edison. For most shows you have a cast and crew; for us it’s just the people competing.”
Senior Lauren Banka, the group’s performance crew captain, said the most meaningful part of the experience for her was a speech freshman WU-SLam member Cecilia Appleberry gave—intended as a pre-slam pep talk but given on Saturday due to last-minute obligations before the performance.
“She [said] how the only thing we had to do at this point was embody our poems—we had already done amazing work and everyone in the room was going to support us no matter what,” Banka said. “And in the middle of the speech I just started crying because it was exactly what had happened.”
Aaron Samuels, who founded WU-SLam and graduated last year, came back to St. Louis to host this year’s slam.
“It was surreal; I really feel like this is where my home is, so coming back and seeing everybody who was basically my family for four years be successful, be brilliant, was such a fulfilling experience,” Samuels said. “It was an honor to be on the stage with all those incredible writers and performers and to be able to give this final gift back to the organization to do whatever was in my power to make it the best show possible.”
He added that seeing WU-SLam continue to grow since his departure was heartwarming. He noted that over the summer, the group started competing against adult poetry teams for the first time, an honor rarely bestowed to collegiate performers.
In its first year competing, WU-SLam made it to the semifinals of the National Poetry Slam, identifying it as one of the top adult teams in the nation.
“Just like anybody who starts something, when you leave you just worry it’s not going to be successful,” Samuels said. “This show, I think, was a clear message to the world that WU-SLam is here to stay. And nothing makes me more happy than that.”
Students said they found the performance both entertaining and moving.
“I unfortunately had to leave early, but I loved what I did get to see,” senior Alexa Difiore said. “There were a variety of pieces: some were deep, some were funny, and some were random. I like how they were all unique in their own way.”
With additional reporting by Caro Peguero.