Marc Smith, impresario of the famed Uptown Poetry Slam, takes the stage promptly at 7:09 to open yet another round of Sunday-night art fights. By Slam standards it’s a meager crowd; all the seats are filled (including several hastily added folding chairs), but no one has to stand in the back. While the improvisational jazz quartet the Pong Unit revs up behind him, Smith slinks up to the snake-neck microphone on the Green Mill’s funky makeshift stage.
“Two hours and ten minutes until time tells me I gotta do it all over again at the Green Mill,” he moans.
The crowd hoots en masse.
Smith has been doing it all over again — and again and again — for more than a decade, hosting the city’s premiere poetry saturnalia each week, helping turn the once sub-marginal genre of performance poetry into something MTV and Lollapalooza now swoon over.
“The world’s gone nuts,” he chants to bring his poem to a close. “If you don’t believe me, read the Tribuuuune!”
Smith is one part palooka, one part rhapsode and 10 parts mother hen. He spends much of the evening wandering through the crowd, cracking jokes, committed to making sure everyone in the joint is having a good time. Meanwhile, this week’s crew of hopefuls vie for the $10 grand prize. It’s a heartfelt, hokey evening, and with his unabashed populist streak, Smith, like Sinatra, understands the beauty of sincere hokum.
When Smith began gigging at the Green Mill in 1986 with his Chicago Poetry Ensemble, the Slam had yet to be born.
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“We did this poetry-variety show,” he says. “We were writing, rehearsing and performing three one-hour sets each week. It was nuts. When we got to that last hour, after 15 minutes we were faking it. So in desperation one Sunday, to fill that last set, we had an open mike competition. And all the barflies shut up and listened. And I said, `Well, this is what we want.’ “
Since those heady days, poetry slams have exploded around the country. The trend has been a mixed blessing in Smith’s opinion, generating much-needed enthusiasm but poisoning the atmosphere with promises of stardom.
“Every year I take the Chicago team to the national poetry slam — which I hate,” he says. “It’s a bunch of egos.”
From Smith’s perspective, the Slam isn’t about competition at all. “This place is like a community center,” he says. “It’s a human drama that includes everyone in the room.”
The kind of warmth and graciousness that pervades the Mill every Sunday night is a rare commodity in the art world. It’s just poetry — some of it dreadful — but Minister Smith’s preaching is good for the soul.
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The Uptown Poetry Slam takes place every Sunday at 7 p.m. at the Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway. Phone 773-878-5552.