Salt Lake City is home to the Salt City Slam, held once a month, every last Monday at the downtown Even Stevens location. It’s run by the Wasatch Wordsmiths, an organization that promotes spoken word and poetry in Salt Lake and its surrounding areas.
Every year, Salt City Slam and the Wasatch Wordsmiths send a team of the best poets they can find to the National Poetry Slam, where poets across the globe (so “national” doesn’t make one hundred percent sense, but c’est la vie and all) compete for glory, and also share their craft. To decide which poets represent SLC at the 2018 National Poetry Slam in Chicago, the Wordsmiths are holding their Salt City Slam Finals.
Throughout the year, poets have competed at monthly slams to earn “points” determined by how well they ranked at the competitive poetry slams. The top ten poets earn a spot on finals stage. However, in this year’s spicy twist, there was a tie for tenth place, between rookie poet Nate Roundy, and returning champion, Bryce Wilson, who was on the team last year.
Now, at finals the poets will perform in three rounds, with the lowest ranking poets eliminated each round. Then, in the final round, the winner of first place and second place earn spots on the five-person team. The next two team members will be determined at April’s Sugar Slam Finals, and the third place poets at both events will battle it out for the final spot. Complicated? Sort of. But what you know is this: Salt City Finals is a night of fierce, fierce competition.
Plus! Clementine von Radics, internationally renowned poet hailing from Portland, Oregon, is the featured poet, meaning they’re doing a full set of their beautiful work.
Each poet is coming with their fiercest face forward and coming for blood, but like in a soft-emotion-bearing way. You might need to be there for the craft, the art, and the emotional experience. You might need to be there for the DRAMA, for the juicy tension and nail-biting experience of seeing if your favorite poet makes it. It’s like the Bachelor, but not. Or you might just need to be there to support your local art community. Or maybe, maybe you need to be there to have one of the best nights of your life.
The show is March 27th at 8 pm, located at the Off Broadway Theatre. Purchase tickets online now at a lower price here : https://www.eventbrite.com/e/salt-city-slam-finals-2018-tickets-44072150…
Banner image source [here]. Images in article courtesy of the Wasatch Wordsmiths.