"What this country needs is another bungalow. With two white neo-classical PVC columns at the front door (go on, willya, go on!), Four white neo-classical PVC columns holdin' up the front porch,
Six white neo-classical PVC columns stretchin' the len'th o' the Italianate veranda (Nnyaaa!), An' two big white cast-concrete eagles on the front lawn, An' two huge "feck-off" pillars at the front gate, Covered with that black and white pebble dashin', That looks like it came off a grave from the local cemetery, And topped with two massive mad roarin' lions - (Nnyaaaaaaa!)"
Chicago, look out, because here comes Trish Casey, heading off at the end of May to give a guest performance at the Mecca of performance poetry, the Uptown Poetry Slam. The Chicago gig is Trish's prize for taking first place in the Poetry Grand Slam competition in Galway last Saturday as part of the Cúirt International Festival of Literature.
Bungalow Nation, from which the lines quoted above are taken, was the entry which entirely banjaxed Trish's competitors and left the audience floored. "I am thrilled with this win," says Trish. "It's the perfect prize for a performance poet."
When it comes to poetry readings, slam is the other side of sedate. It's more about performance than poetry, with zero tolerance for corduroy suits and shy introductory remarks. If one expects a hush to descend on a rapt audience, forget it. A poetry slam audience is there to howl and whoop and cheer and be as partisan as possible. That's why a pub venue is as good as any; and in Galway, the excellent Bar Cuba by Eyre Square, with its stage and mini-amphitheatre, was ideal. Of course the other useful aspect is that, being in a bar, one can discreetly summon up a pint if some of the performances are less than enthralling - which can happen. I have noticed a distinct lack of bars at more traditional poetry readings.
With the Cúirt festival focusing on writers from the EU accession countries, the theme for the Galway slam was "expansion", and the 25 performers seized on this broad theme with gusto, slamming on topics from parturition to politics, from reining in Riverdance to ribbon development.
The grotesque phenomenon of rural bungalows entirely inappropriate to their surroundings was the subject of Trish Casey's rip-roaring performance. Bungalow Nation proved to be a classic slam act, with aggressive satire, comic intensity, plenty of audience interaction ("Nnyaaa!") and a clever use of repetition, rising in a suitably exaggerated west of Ireland accent to a crescendo which should be enough to scare off forever anyone even thinking of despoiling the countryside (though of course it won't).
On May 30th Irish slam fans in Chicago will surely turn up in numbers for Trish Casey's 20-minute guest slot. While the Galway event was pretty competitive, Chicago's Green Mill is the Mecca of slam. It was brought to prominence by Marc Smith Kelly, aka Slampapi, a poet and former construction worker who knocked the stuffiness out of poetry delivery in 1986 when he set up a weekly poetry competition in the Green Mill, a Chicago jazz club and former haunt of Al Capone, and the traditionally slow Sunday nights suddenly picked up speed. Drawing on baseball and bridge for terminology, Smith named the event the Uptown Poetry Slam, and 18 years on it has evolved into one of the biggest slam events in the world. More than 50 American cities now field poetry slam teams, with competitors preparing like Olympic athletes - not to mention dressing on occasion like Brazilian ladyboys. There are lengthy qualification grounds, and the scoring is precise enough to involve decimal points.
One can find poetry slam events here and there across Ireland - RTÉ's Rattlebag programme organises one annually - but the concept has not yet caught on properly. Indeed, the Galway event could have used a better weeding-out process. Too many of the entrants were using scripts - a heinous crime at American slams - and quite a few seemed to have no notion of the performance element required. As Trish Casey says, "Many people are not familiar with slams - they don't know what is expected."
Most entrants could also have done with putting more thought into their wardrobe, though Obo Martin, who came fourth with a riveting performance, looked the part in his djalba and rainbow ponytails. The judging was all done at the end of the Galway slam, whereas in the US, judges hold up score cards at the end of each performance. This helps build the excitement, with each new performer - and the audience - knowing what score must be beaten.
More traditional poets tend to turn up their noses at slam, but these events recall the bardic contests of old. Shakespeare knew all about the value of interacting with his audience, and even the Greek tragedians competed for prizes. In Britain, slam events have been taking place for about 10 years - John Paul O'Neill's series of Farrago slams have now featured over 1,000 performers. The Poetry Society in England also organises an annual poetry slam event for young people aged 12 to 18, drawn from schools, youth clubs and young offenders' institutions.
Not only are the finals good, clean, rowdy fun, but the Poetry Society judges don bikinis for the occasion. Now there's an idea for Galway.