There are poets everywhere, and if you don’t believe that, you should have been at the Newberry Library on July 25 for a celebration in honor of Marc Kelly Smith, a poet who created and still hosts what is known as the Uptown Poetry Slam.
The event marked the 40th anniversary of the first slam, which was held and is still held at the Green Mill (3 p.m. this Sunday), and the Newberry’s formal acceptance of materials that include photos, programs, publicity, audiovisual materials, artifacts and administrative files (physical and digital) documenting the slam’s history. There are also Smith’s personal notes, details of shows and poets’ performances, newsletters and marketing materials. Even a pair of boxing gloves given to Smith by the late poet and artist Tony Fitzpatrick.
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The Newberry’s Alison Hinderliter, curator of modern manuscripts, formally said then, “The acquisition of the Marc Kelly Smith Poetry Slam Collection is an amazing gift to the Newberry, and to the city of Chicago.”
She later told me that she and the staff are working energetically to process, organize and catalogue all the materials. Some of this should be made available for public exploration and academic research before the year is done, but won’t be finished for perhaps three years.
She also told me about another slam event scheduled for 2 p.m. on Sept. 26. That is World Poetry Slam Day, the first such event, and it will involve events in 50 cities in France and 15 countries such as the Ivory Coast, Mexico and other places that are home to slams. “It is really stunning how far the slam has grown,” said Hinderliter. “It’s a global phenomenon.”
There is no denying the slam’s impact. You would have gotten a perfect example if you attempted to tackle the New York Times’ crossword puzzle Monday. There you would have found this 62-across clue, “Poetry competition,” the four-letter solution to which was “slam.” And if you Google “Who invented the poetry slam,” I won’t make you guess whose name pops up.
Still, I suppose there might be some of you who need to know what a slam is. And so, I once called a slam a “word symphony of organized chaos … a competition among poets of varying talent scored by three judges chosen at random from the crowd. Audience members voice their displeasure by finger snapping, foot stomping, groaning, hissing or grunting. The winning poet gets $10.”
This “crowd pleaser,” as Smith calls it, takes place on stages, taverns, galleries, laundromats, classrooms and other places, held for and in front of all ages, sexes, religions.
“Since our opening event there have been so many emails, so many calls from all over,” Hinderliter says. “In addition to all of this, other poets have been sending in books, magazines and all sorts of related things, some of which we will display at the September event. … All of which are examples of Marc’s influence and inspiration. All the praise is so deserved.”
Few people on the city’s cultural scene are more deserving of that praise, few who I like and admire more than Smith. I have written about him often, interviewed him plenty and read most everything he has written.
Other admirers were at the August Newberry event. One was Michelle Boone, president and CEO of The Poetry Foundation. She was with Adrian Matejka, the editor of venerable and vibrant Poetry magazine, which the foundation publishes.
“The celebration was something else,” he told me. “It reminded me of how much hustle and ingenuity it takes to make space for poetry in the world. I feel a little distanced from that at the foundation, but it’s always there when I write poems.”
So I asked him a logical question, “Why do you write poetry?”
“Poetry is the only way I know to make sense of what’s happening around me,” he told me. “There are many times, especially now, for too many reasons to list, when everyday language can’t hold my frustrations, worries, or curiosities. Metaphor and simile help to give those feelings a more tangible shape, which I hope might also bring lucidity to someone else. This is reductive, but I don’t know another way to do it: poetry helps me find the language I need to survive day to day. This stays true whether I’m writing my own poem or reading someone else’s work.”
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Matejka is the author of the recent “Be Easy: New and Selected Poems” (Liveright) and other fine poetry collections for which he was a finalist for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize, and a stunning graphic novel, “Last on His Feet,” which I called “a wonder of words and images… a masterpiece.” A former poet laureate of Indiana, he is a respected veteran of the poetry world.
For another perspective, I talked to young Chicago poet Dylan Weir, whose quite good and honest first collection, “Public House,” was recently published by Trio House Press.
“The canned answer is, I write to find out what I’m thinking. Which, at any given moment, is typically a mystery to me,” he told me. “In my book, there’s a line, ‘I was born like a child, with too much to say.’ Anyone with young kids knows that stage where their need to express themselves completely outpaces their capacity for language.
“I think I just never outgrew that condition. I have a lot to say, but in daily conversation, I don’t always get it right. Poetry gives me the time and space to capture the things I otherwise couldn’t.
“The truth can’t always be expressed in prose. Which is linear, logical, and often completely unlike the way I experience the world. Prose explains a place, feeling, or event; poetry recreates it. It allows room for sound itself to have meaning. It makes silence, rhythm and fragmentation not a feature but an essential part of the expression.”
Rereading what these two poets had to say reminded me of a night many years ago. A bourbon in front of me and Marc Kelly Smith on the Green Mill stage. He was talking. Nothing unusual there, but what he said, 12 words, has stayed with me ever since, and becomes ever louder with each passing year and each new poet I meet. He said, “Poetry is the heart of the people and the people is everyone.”