This weekend, 15 poets will use their creations to battle it out in a poetry slam
Aspiring poets will read out their work to be judged by an audience at the event
Poetry is gaining popularity in Mumbai, with workshops, open mic nights and recitals. This weekend, you can watch 15 of the city’s up-and-coming poets battle it out in a first of its kind poetry slam, where they will read out their works to be judged by an audience.
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Rochelle D’Silva
The Bombay Slam is the brainchild of spoken word artist, Rochelle D’Silva of Words Tell Stories (WTS). “One of the main reasons behind this is to improve the quality of poetry emerging from the city. A competition can have negative connotations but it can also benefit the poets and improve their confidence,” says D’Silva.
The idea came about when D’Silva was on a poetry tour in Nepal recently, where she met international poets. “Every city we went to, the slam winners were the ones performing and you could see the difference in the confidence and poetry. I thought if a schoolchild can be so confident of his art, why does someone who has been writing poetry for years, has performed at open mic nights and is fluent in the language, not have the same confidence?” asks D’Silva.
This is the first edition of The Bombay Slam; there will be a slam every three months and the winners will finally battle it out next November. Each event will have two rounds — the first one will last two minutes; five of the best poets will make it to the second round where they will get three minutes to recite a poem. The best three poets of the lot will be crowned winners. The five judges will be selected randomly from the audience.
The participants were selected at the last WTS open mic night in October. All the selected poets had to go through a mentoring workshop, familiarising with rules, origin and history of poetry slams.
“I showed them different poetry videos to give them an idea of what makes a slam poem different from one that you would read at an open mic. I also got them thinking about time and how to plan their recital keeping that in mind,” adds D’Silva. “I’ve been into poetry for a couple of years. I thought I should start competing and achieving something instead of just attending events,” says Isha Joshi, 18, an SYBMM student and one of the selected 15. “This slam is also good for beginners who want to get comfortable with sharing their intimate thoughts in public,” she adds.
The slammers
The participating poets are Malvika Kathpal, Neha Raghani, Laxmi Krishnan, Yogendra Singh, Aishwarya Kamat, Kejal Shah, Jackie Thakkar, Naveen Chourey, Subodh Chaubey, Isha Joshi, Tej Pikle, Shruti Sunderraman, Anuj Mahadik, Nadeem Raj and Anmol Gawand.
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