Fervent talk of overprotective mothers and enraptured lovers all enthralling the attentive crowd. Such was the setting for the Poetry Slam last Thursday, which is held at 8 p.m. weekly in the Pollock Commons Espress'ery Coffee House. The slams were founded by University teachers Charles Dumas and Gigi Marino. The Poetry Slam gives poets a chance to share their work with others and be judged by a group of their peers.
Poets select three of their poems to read aloud, one piece for each round.
Fellow students, usually volunteers from the crowd, serve as judges, ranking the poems on a scale from one to 10. The Slam is open to everyone and attracts a variety of artists, from freshmen to graduate students and some non-University participants. Jennifer Valle, one of the poets who shared her work last Thursday, is not affiliated with the University. She saw a poster and decided to come to the reading. Valle said she has been writing poetry for a while but was still extremely nervous when she first had to read to a crowd of strangers.