Inaugurated by The Gulf Coast Ethnic and Heritage Jazz Festival, Inc. in 2000, The EVENING of POETRY is in its 8th year and brings together ‘spoken-word’ artists in celebration of poetry and in recognition of poetry’s vital place in American culture.  

This year’s EVENING of POETRY, will be spiced with presentations from area spoken word artists with a pinch of competition thrown in for good measure.  

The Festival is offering an “OPEN SIGN-UP for a “poetry slam.”  Poets who wish to participate in the slam must sign up by 6:45 P.M. for one of the limited COMPETITION SLOTS.  The first fifteen (15) persons to sign up for competition will compete for Festival Slam CASH Awards. 

HOW DOES THE GCEHJazzFest POETRY SLAM WORK? 

ANYONE can participate but: 

If you want to compete then you MUST SIGN UP by 6:30P.M. Thursday, July 31st.  Only the first fifteen (15) persons to sign up can compete for Festival Slam Honors.  First come, first served. 

You will be called up from the sign-up list and then: 

Step up to the mic and perform one poem of your own construction, any style and any subject.  No props, no costumes, no musical accompaniment no animal acts and no profanity will be allowed.  Maximum time allowed:  3 minutes. 

A group of five (5) judges will score each poetic presentation on the basis of both content and performance using a scale of 0.0 -10.0 points For each scoring, the highest score and the lowest score will be dropped and the middle scores added together.  A perfect score would be 30.0 points. 

After one round, the three (3) top scorers will advance to a final SLAM OFF.  In the slam off, the artist may present the same poem or a different poem, again of his or her own construction.  The Points are NOT the Point, the POINT is POETRY.  Everybody has a lot of fun and at the end three poets are acknowledged with Festival Slam Cash Awards.

For more information contact gcehjazz1@yahoo.com or call 473-5020