I walked in the red wooden door of the Firehouse Gallery and expected a stage. Instead I saw a stove, a sitting area and a kitchen counter.
The Phoenix Poetry Slam is difficult to find for first timers. I ended up in someone’s house. Right location, wrong door. The poetry slam is in the backyard of Firehouse, an art gallery, vintage shop and performance venue. It is also is the home of Aaron Johnson, who started the event.
The experience is guaranteed to be a unique one. The venue features two stages that appear handmade next to a small coffee bar and a lounge made up of old sofas. Those are set up in front of a used television and a toilet-turned-art with foliage flooding the tank. A metal UFO structure and an abandoned pirate ship made of old shopping carts occupy the rear of the lot.
The sun set behind the shopping cart sculpture and the show started.
Johnson, the crepe chef of Jobot Coffee Shop, began participating in poetry slams during high school and took it upon himself to establish the Pink Slip Poetry Slam every Monday at Jobot.
After some time, the event outgrew the small coffee shop and it morphed with another local poetry slam, Tombstone, to create what is now Phoenix Poetry Slam, held every first and third Saturday of the month at 8 p.m.
Phoenix Poetry Slam offers a $100 prize to the winning poet. Five judges are selected at random from the crowd to do the judging.
Scanning the audience for potential candidates, Johnson pointed at me from the stage.
“How about the reporter guy?” he said.
I hesitated.
A rough-looking poet in front of me turned around. “What do you think of my boots?” he said, pointing down at his shoes.
“They are nice,” I responded, my tone wavering.
“See,” he said. “You can be judgmental. You can judge.”
I passed, citing my responsibility to report, and other judges were selected.
The competition was set and the crowd was ready to “spill some guts on the stage,” as Johnson put it, smiling.
A poet who called herself Essence was the first to approach the dimly lit stage. She “spit” her life story in Long time coming, a piece she classified as “street talk poetry.”
She said poetry should be a performing art. Poets put so much emphasis on “spittin’ right,” Essence said. “You’ve got to draw people in.”
All work at Phoenix Poetry Slam is original, uncensored, propless and confined to a three-minute time limit.
“Poetry is the quintessential art form,” Johnson said. “It is breathable, flexible. It changes over time.”
Essence and one other poet went past the time limit in the first round and were disqualified.
The poems were diverse. Passion flowed equally throughout the competition, from a poem about a broken home recited by Sean Medlin to a humorous, religious story about Captain Crucifix and God Dog by Ashley Naftule.
The poets were even more diverse than the poems. The third and final round featured Merlin Hepworth, Medlin and Garrett Pauli.
Hepworth put energy and power behind his words. A vein ran down the length of his neck, swollen and throbbing with intensity.
Medlin spoke with a calm precision. In his final poem, he personified an AK-47 rifle detailing the horrors elicited when its throat is squeezed.
Pauli, 16, was the youngest at the slam and has been writing poetry for less than eight months. His slight lisp was offset by lines that proved talent and wisdom beyond his years.
After the last tally, Hepworth placed first followed by Pauli and Medlin, respectively.
Hepworth, an ASU creative writing graduate, has been a poet for over four years and has performed all over the country. He works as a teaching artist at the Arizona Commission of the Arts and hosts a youth poetry workshop called Phonetic Spit at the Burton Barr Central Library.
“When you give young people a voice, it gives you the ability to empower others,” Hepworth said.
A shiver ran across my scalp multiple times that evening. Words have immense power, but even the words do not do the poems justice.
Contact the reporter at domenico.nicosia@asu.edu
