The competition and festivities of the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam culminated Saturday night at the Marquee Theatre in Tempe, where Porsha Olayiwola, who hails from Boston, was crowned the champion.
The Marquee, which has a capacity of 1,000 people, hosted both locals and poetry enthusiasts from across the country as they came together for the final round.
The 12 finalists, who were determined after battling through two days of preliminary bouts, delivered emotional and compelling poems to the audience. The audience was encouraged to be loud and express their disagreement or agreement with the judges’ scores. The poems addressed a variety of themes, including discrimination, identity, body image and acceptance.
Aaron Hopkins-Johnson, the host-city coordinator for IWPS and owner of used bookstore Lawn Gnome Publishing, took to the stage to welcome the audience and thank the volunteers and sponsors who made the event possible.
“I can’t stress how important it is to have volunteers to help run these events,” Hopkins-Johnson said.
Hopkins-Johnson shared his gratitude for the local venues that participated as well for being safe spaces for free speech throughout the festival.
Before the finals officially began, five audience members were randomly selected to serve as judges for the event. Li Samuel was one of them, and she said she enjoyed her role.
“It was fun to have some control over the results,” Samuel said. “I just judged what I heard.”
And for Samuel, who had never been to a poetry slam before, the variety of poems enriched the event.
“This is the first time people get to hear about the poets’ different experiences,” Samuel said.
The judges were instructed to use criteria of performance, content and originality. Judges used a scale of 0.0 to 10.0 (poor to best) to score the three rounds of poems. The lowest and highest scores of each round were omitted, and the middle three were added together to give the poet their score, a maximum of 30 points.
Each poet had up to three minutes to present their piece, and throughout the night, half-point penalties were given for violating the time limit.
After the first round, the eight highest-scoring poets returned to the stage to share a second poem, and the top four made it into the third and final round.
Desiree Dallagiacomo, from New Orleans, finished in third place after presenting her pieces about self-image, family and loss. Danez Smith, from St. Paul, took second place with his poems about his challenges and his hopes.
Olayiwola was a frontrunner throughout the evening, both with official scores and audience reception.
“Porsha’s poem on capitalism was awesome, and she won, so I was happy about that,” Tamitha Blunt, an audience member, said.
In addition to her slam about the oppressiveness of capitalism, Olayiwola also shared poems about her anger with the education system and her refusal to conform her language to society’s standards.
Olayiwola’s victory did not come as a shock to Blunt.
“I wasn’t surprised, I was hoping for it,” Blunt said. “Her stage presence was great, as well as her interaction with the audience. I could relate to her.”
Contact the reporter at rbouley@asu.edu
