@3 - was Stuarts the reading you were involved with in Bellingham? if so - nice one. that place had hands down the best open mic I've ever been to in my 20 or so years of going to open mics. it's not that everyone there was great, but even the crappy ones were crappy in more fresh, interesting, charming ways than similarly crappy readers at other venues.

re: slam -

there are some bright spots - some of the bigger fish in the community at the national level are decent writers and great performers, and once in a while one will see a newcomer do something really fresh and exciting.

unfortunately, the scene seems to be stagnating rather than improving. it's mostly a big circle jerk of crappy writers (and more often than not, crappy performers as well) applauding the crappy efforts of other crappy writers. they self-publish their chapbooks, 90% of which are crap, and then sell them to each other as if they were signing each other's yearbooks. and the more time someone spends doing it, they more they start to sound just like everyone else doing it.

I'm not just saying this as an outsider - I've been an occasional (and sometimes a regular) spectator at the Seattle Slam since 1996 and have watched it get progressively more generic, unimaginative, and circle-jerky every year. it's not that it was great to begin with, but it used to at least be interesting. you'll still see something good occasionally, but it's gotten a lot more rare.

probably the best thing that could happen to the slam community is if it stopped being, or thinking of itself as, a community. people praise each other's shit writing because they don't want to hurt a friend's feelings or because the author is a popular local figure and they don't want to call them out or take an unpopular critical position. but with no one being willing to stand up and say when something is bad, there's no incentive to try and improve (and no way to even know whether one has done so).

which brings me to the second best thing that could happen to the slam community and that is if some of the so-called poets started spending their spare time reading some actual poetry once in a while. ask any random five poets at the slam who their favorite poets are and the list will almost always consist almost entirely of people they know personally and two or three names from the set of the dozen or so most popular page poets. reading new work by people outside their incestuous scene would go a long way toward opening up new stylistic avenues, and reading lots of work by somewhat-less-than-super-famous dead people would also help with that, in addition to maybe providing some sense of continuity, history, and underlying theory of poetics.

and finally, there's the third best thing that could happen to the slam community and that is the immediate demise of most of the "schools" and "classes" and "workshops" that are set up by slam people for slam people to teach slam poetry to other slam people. they perpetuate the generic quality of the work by putting students through the same sorts of exercises and holding up the same types of things as examples to which to aspire. the Bent Institute is a great example - I've seen probably two or three dozen alumni of their program perform over the last decade or so and with two exceptions, they all sounded exactly like Tara Hardy...only not as good usually. Tara herself is a half decent writer and a really outstanding performer, and so it's understandable why someone would want to sound like her. but Bent is failing as an institution by not pushing its participants to seek out a different, less derivative style. and it's only a local example of something that happens all over.

(and in case any of the slam crowd jump all over this, as I've seen them do with other critiques over the years, no - I am not an embittered person who failed to win and now hates the slam. I am not a poet myself, and have only competed once as a joke. I am crazy about good reading, good performance, and original ideas though, which is why I actually give enough of a shit to have an opinion, and why I still drop in from time to time to see what's going on. I also happen to be friends with a bunch of slam and former-slam people, have bought a bunch of product over the years, and have been to slams in several other cities and to nationals. so whatever rebuttal you were about to make, you're probably wrong.)