POETRY SCENE
Wordstew: Poetic justice at performance slam

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer

Akaloka Rivers says Wordstew poetry slam audiences are receptive to a more expressive use of a poet's body language, gestures and tone. Photos by Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser Wordstew Poetry Slam With a featured performance by Quincy Troupe 6 p.m. Sunday Kumu Kahua Theatre $5 536-4222, 843-1390

The founder of Wordstew — what he describes as "a small independent, essentially nonprofit poetry organization" — Lipman paused, straightened his loose orange T-shirt over his baggy blue jeans and shuffles his rubber-slippered feet, before asking, "So, sharks or children?"

Carnivorous denizens of the undersea realm were the overwhelming choice of the audience — 75 or so poets and poetry fans testing the seating limits of The ARTS at Marks Garage's smallish proscenium theater space. Lipman read his composition, "Looking For Sharks," with the relish of a poet who has done far too much organizing of late and too little actually writing and reciting. The accompanying applause was warm.

"This is not a slam," he warned the audience after his reading, offering up one final open-mike rule. "We don't boo or hiss in here. You'll have a chance to do that on the 27th."

Discussing Wordstew's coming slam over lunch a couple of weeks later, Lipman mused on the differences between slam's competitive brand of performance poetry, and open mike, its noncompetitive, but oftimes equally brash, verbal cousin.

"The slam kind of brings out the best in poets," he explained. "It entices poets who really want that rush of reading their best stuff ... of doing their best performance in front of a crowd of people. Open mike is a little bit more informal. It's really an opportunity for people to read whatever they feel like reading at the time. If somebody wants to get up and read a really long, kind of boring poem, we let them do it."

Lipman launched Wordstew in January 2000 with the intention of offering local poets like himself a regular series of open-mike nights with zero restrictions on content and participation.

"More established local poets were doing really good stuff, and I liked it, but they really weren't giving people a chance to just come out and express themselves," Lipman recalled. "It was more for people who were already published, connected and kind of established."

Lipman's open-mike nights at coffee houses and other small spots around Honolulu were an instant hit among the regular-Joe poetry set, often packing audiences in wall to wall. But after a few months, Wordstew's growing poetry faithful began pestering Lipman to organize a slam.

"I'd seen poetry slams before," Lipman said. "Some I liked. Some I didn't really like. Personally, I didn't know if it was necessary. I thought if you could put a good open-mike together, you could accomplish a lot of the same stuff that you could accomplish in a slam."

Lipman had a change of heart after participating in his first slam, while visiting friends in Berkeley, Calif., that June.

"It was really fun," he said. "Although I didn't win, just being on stage with, mostly, all these really good poets ... was great."

Wordstew held its first slam in September 2000, using a similar judging format as the Berkeley competition: Five judges pulled at random from the evening's slam audience judging 10 poets over the course of three elimination rounds. Always factoring into the judges' final decisions, either consciously or subconsciously: a continuing color commentary provided by the audience.

"Poetry slams are traditionally full of audience participation," Lipman said. "If people like something, they can cheer, boo, hiss, laugh and pretty much do anything they want to do. Even when the poets are reading." Even so, Lipman has found Honolulu audiences a bit mellower when it comes to expressing negative opinions.

Audience participation is an essential and noisy part of the experience during Wordstew readings. Judges, pulled at random from the audience, factor in the cheers, laughter, booing and hissing.

Lipman insisted he doesn't mind, chalking up Honolulu audiences' dearth of, um, "constructive criticism" to the local scene's own evolving and unique personality.

"I think the thing that defines what we've done here is create an environment where there isn't this one slam voice that is dominant," Lipman said, referencing other metro slam scenes where it seemed every poet was channeling the mojo of Saul Williams, a New York City slam legend with a verbal style rooted in the cadences and rhythms of hip-hop. "We've had all types of styles and content here. Which keeps it fun when you have someone reading their poem in pidgin, some old haole guy reading something goofy, someone with something political and another person reading something sexual."

Wordstew's slams have drawn poets of many ages and ethnicities, Lipman said. Some are strictly slam slaves. Some are veterans of open-mike nights. Others are new to the slam experience.

"I don't want people to think that the slam is for young poets or those with a certain style," he said. "If you have something that people will relate to, it will do well in a slam."

Poet Akaloka Rivers has read at open-mikes and slams here and on the Mainland. On stage, the 31-year-old is a poetic force to be reckoned with. Her weekend soccer-mom conservative dress and demeanor instantly forgotten the moment she lets loose "the rants and raves and screams and swearing" detailing her 14-year marriage and subsequent divorce, motherhood, local upbringing and fairly recent coming out as a lesbian.

"I think I'm more revved up at a slam," Rivers said. "Poets feed off of each other's energy. And there's so much energy in the room at a slam compared to an (open-mike) reading. Props are not allowed, but you can use your body, your gestures, your tone, your alliteration. You can use so much more to make your poetry more powerful than you can, say, standing up with a poetry book at Borders."

"I do slam because it's like I have to do it," says singularly-named poet Katana, 22, who won Wordstew's last slam in June. "I've been driven to do it my whole life. For me, it's not about the competition or winning. It's about speaking what I feel and expressing my writing in front of others."

Katana has nothing but praise for the unusual environment Lipman has created for slam in Honolulu.

"Jesse is the only person that I feel runs slams in a way that is true to the art's spirit," Katana said. "He doesn't run it like it's just about competition or like it's a local thing. He runs it more like an international gathering of thoughts. And I really like and respect that."