This year’s College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) will be held at VCU. If you’re not exactly sure what slam poetry is, here’s the lowdown on how the competition works.
- The order in which the teams will compete is completely random.
- Each poem can not be longer than three minutes, with a 10 second grace period. If the poem exceeds three minutes and 10 seconds, points will be deducted.
- The poets can write about anything; there’s not required subject matter.
- Teams can either send up a solo piece or a group piece whenever they want.
- Five unbiased judges are randomly selected from the crowd, and are instructed on what they are supposed to do.
- After each poem, the judges will score the poet anywhere from 0.0-10.
- The highest and lowest scores from the judges are dropped.
Now that you are aware of how slam poetry works, here’s how CUPSI is set up. Over 60 teams are set to compete and these teams are divided into 17 different groups which are called “bouts.” On the first two nights, which are the preliminary rounds, each bout has four different teams that will compete against each other for four rounds. After the preliminaries, the top teams will advance to the semifinals on Friday. The semifinals also has four bouts and four rounds. After semifinals, the top four teams will advance to the finals on Saturday at 7 p.m. in the Altria Theater. Tickets for the finals are $10, and are on sale in Breakpoint in the student commons.
Come support VCU’s slam poetry team, “Good Clear Sound,” this Wednesday at 9 p.m. in the Common’s Underground!