For the second consecutive year, a New Haven-based spoken-word team, Verbal Slap, plans to compete at the National Poetry Slam, which will take place August 7 – 11 in Charlotte, N.C. As it did last year, the team is counting on donations to defray travel, food, and lodging costs associated with the trip.
The team — Baub Bidon, Fredrick Douglas Knowles, Tarishi Shuler, Croilot Carlos Adames, Warren Hawk, and Sharmont Little — hopes to raise $3,500 through GoFundMe.com. To date, the team has raised $625 toward that goal.
Frank Brady of F.E.B. Communications served as a publicist for the team’s 2011 appearance at the National Poetry Slam in Boston. As the New Haven Independent reported in August 2011, “Brady said the poetry team’s participation at the National Poetry Slam ‘literally helps to spark a poetry renaissance’ in New Haven and throughout Connecticut, and that ‘this also has implications for the youth’ in the region and across the state.”
Reached by telephone on Friday, Shuler said Verbal Slap performed well at last year’s National Poetry Slam in Boston but inadvertently broke a competition rule, preventing the team from advancing past the first round of competition.
Last year’s goal, Shuler said, was to let people know that Connecticut had a strong poetry team. This year, he said, “everybody’s looking forward to seeing (Verbal Slap) perform” in North Carolina.
Beyond that, he said, the team’s participation at the National Poetry Slam helps people understand that poetry “helps with communication skills” and can help people examine their feelings in a positive and peaceful way. It’s a “way to live above the influence” of violence, he said.
According to the National Poetry Slam website, “poetry slam is conventionally defined as the art of competitive performance poetry. Invented in the 1980s by a Chicago construction worker named Marc Smith, slam is a fast-paced competition where poets have a limited amount of time to impress judges randomly selected from the audience.”
Language on Verbal Slap’s GoFundMe.com page explains that the team’s “vision is to put our state on the map and show the rest of the country the wealth of talent Connecticut has to offer.”
Visit Verbal Slap’s GoFundMe.com page here, and learn more about the National Poetry Slam here.
