DC Black Pride Mary Bowman Poetry Slam

Saturday, May 25 · 6 - 9 p.m.

The DC Black Pride Mary Bowman Poetry Slam is a spoken-word competition in which poets perform their original work; telling their story of pain, triumph, adversity, joy, humor, their passionate opinions on politics, socio-economics, cultures, hilarious poems, or poems about nothing at all, and are THEN scored by five judges.

It is absolutely free to Slam and to enjoy the show!

13 poets will compete in 3 elimination rounds for 1st, 2nd, & 3rd place. There will be cash prizes and more.

Participate in Poetry Slam

Poets who wish to compete should arrive at the host hotel between 5 and 6:15 p.m. to sign up. Sign ups are first come, first served. No exceptions and no holding spaces.

Poets interested in participate should note that this is a poetry competition and your work will be judged by 5 different individuals from the community. Poets will be judged on writing, performance, and originality of your poem.

Rules

Each round judges score the poets on a scale of 0.0 to 10.0 scoring the poets on the writing, the performance and originality of the poem. The top scores move forward in the competition

Three elimination rounds: 1st round 13 poets, 2nd round 7 poets, 3rd round 4 poets

Each round is random, we will draw names from a bowl each round

Each round is a clean slate. We do not tally the scores at the end.

Poets get 3 MINUTES AND 10 SECONDS to perform. Every second after is a 0.5 deduction.

Time starts when the poet engages the audience.

No props of any kind including but not limited to: clothing, jewelry, items brought on stage are allow. Poets may bring paper or device to read from, but do not reference it, because then it becomes a prop.