Slam Poetry Takes Over Peabody

Porsha Olayiwola started her cadence slow, one deliberate word following another. Before long, though, the words were coming faster and faster, like a train gathering steam. She took the audience with her all the way.

“You will not silence my prize or grammatically correct my ebonics / I am not hooked on your phonics,” she spat out, to laughter and clapping. ​“You will not silence my prize or crack down on this truth / I am louder than this.”

She dropped that final word, someone in the audience shouted ​“come on!” and the place erupted into cheers.

“We didn’t come here to tap dance,” emcee Ngoma said.

It was about an hour into the Annual Invitational Zannette Lewis Environmental and Social Justice Poetry Slam, held at the Peabody Museum’s auditorium on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The slam was already into its second round, and it was standing room only. The poets were already drawing a handful of perfect scores from the judges. It was going to be close.

Spoken-word performances have been a part of the Peabody’s MLK celebration since its inception in 1996. They began with Zannette Lewis, the invitational’s namesake, who ​“was also a big fan of spoken word,” according to David Heiser, head of education and outreach at the museum. She was trying to help broaden the Peabody’s outreach, and brought in Ngoma — a poet, multi-instrumentalist, and priest in the Obatala and Ifa traditions — to run the event and do the inviting.

“He just knows the spoken word community so well,” Heiser said. He makes sure to include up-and-comers among established performers.

From the beginning, ​“a big part of what we wanted to do was to celebrate hip hop culture,” Heiser said. The Peabody’s celebration used to include breakdancing and DJing and at one time involved graffiti art. The two-day event still has a huge musical component. But the spoken word is perhaps at the heart of it, Heiser said, ​“because of the connection to King’s powerful oratory.”

The invitational has grown to become a nationally recognized event in the spoken word community. The cash prizes — this year, $700 for first place, $200 for second place, and $100 for third place, determined by the poets’ cumulative scores as awarded by four judges, Olympics-style — don’t hurt. But more important is the event’s theme.

“The poets were all asked to do pieces about social and environmental justice,” Heiser said. ​“So people know they’re going to be inspired.”

Eyes On The Prize

Anthony Ragler came in strong in the second round. ​“The night of the verdict,” he began. He didn’t have to say which verdict he meant.

He unspooled a story of grief and rage that turned into something else, something more hopeful.

“This night has made lovers out of lone wolves / To us, this is the black Y2K,” he said. ​“This is what makes my people so beautiful / How we can turn tragedy into celebration every single time.”

Then Roya Marsh dealt out a sharp tale that seemed to take in everything in one giant sweep of language, taking on celebrity culture and the rat race before circling back to the street.

“I seen suicide seem appealing when you are emotionally gagged and bound,” she said. ​“The drugs are taking souls, leaving bodies to be found / but if you OD when no one’s listening, does your dead body make a sound? / See there’s a war going on right here in your hometown / But you will not ever see it if you do not look around.”

Michael Chief Patterson went personal: ​“Light skin versus dark skin is all fun and games until you have a son that’s white.” His thoughts on fatherhood unfurled around him, taking the crowd in. ​“How do I raise a half white-skinned boy to be a half black-skinned man?” he said.

In the final round, only four poets remained: Front-runner Porsha Olayiwola, Ragler, Marsh, and Jashua Sa Ra. They all saved their best for last.

Sa Ra went humorous about nutrition and food. Ragler also showed his range with a hilarious poem about a family barbecue. Marsh, however, dug deep. Riffing on Gil Scott-Heron’s ​“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” she paid homage, reworked, and updated it, fitting herself into the tradition while pushing it forward, whipping the audience up with every passing line. She tagged it hard at the end — ​“Gil Scott Heron said it first, but let me remind / This revolution will be live” — and the room went crazy.

She got a perfect score from the judges. Olayiwola would have to bring her best to beat Marsh. And she did.

With the same strategy she employed in the second round, she delivered a dark story, told from the perspective of a personified capitalism, who Olayiwola cast as a malevolent demon extraordinarily pleased with the country it had built, and the suffering it had created. She earned all the dirtiness of her last line, as every word by then had two or three different meanings: ​“I’m the pimp who built this shit / and you ain’t nothing but my bitch.”

The room went insane again. Ngoma called for the scores.

“You don’t need to see the scores,” someone shouted. He was right. Olayiwola also got a perfect score, edging out Marsh to take home the first prize.

“From past accounts and from what I can tell, this is a really well-loved event that people look forward to every year,” Heiser said. And maybe, given what 2014 was like, it meant something even more. During the event, when Heiser was standing in the back, ​“someone came up and said, ​‘man, this couldn’t be more important than to be doing this this year.’ I think people are looking for some validation for what they’re thinking and feeling, and it’s something to hear people express it so eloquently.”

The Peabody has a full video of the event, which also included poets J‑Sun, Influence, So‘re Agbaje, Chilo, Yadira Delariva, Thomas Fucalaro, Mind Evolution, Ms. Reign, Nichole Acosta, Chelsee Johns, and Venessa Marco.