On Wednesday, Oct. 9 students here at BAHS as well as friends gathered inside the Black Box Theatre at 6 P.M. for the first Poetry Slam/Open Mic Night of the year. A single mic stand positioned on the stage in front of a light water colored backdrop created an inviting and relaxed mood. The Slam was divided into two separate parts, with an intermission in between, first the Open Mic portion then the Slam.
The hilarious Host, senior Jash Shah, started off by introducing himself. He then went on to explain how the Open Mic/Slam worked as well as how the audience should be supportive and encouraging of each performer. There were four acts for Open Mic. Noah Courtney, a junior, was the first performer. Noah confidently took to the stage with guitar in hand to perform two original songs, the first entitled, “Find My Way” and the second, which had a faster beat than the first, “I See the Rain”. Following Noah was a singing trio comprised of juniors Danielle Burke and Amy Shields as well as sophomore Diana Kortesis. The three girls performed a fun mash-up of songs including “Love Song” by Sara Bareilles and “Party in the U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus. Next, seniors Becca Wiseman and Maddie Weinberg performed a cover of Gary Jules’, “Mad World” with Becca playing the piano and Maddie on vocals. Lastly, to end the open mic portion of the slam, Mr. Taylor, English teacher and official supervisor the slam, performed an original poem he recently wrote. His poem was in the style of a letter directed towards, “Dear quite boys”. Now that the open mic half was finished, the poetry slam begun. A poetry slam is defined as being, “competitive performance poetry” where a poet has three minutes to perform and is not allowed to wear costumes or use props. Once the intermission was over, Jash explained to everyone how the slam would go down. It was divided into two rounds, each poet had two poems and after they each performed their first one, it would go in reverse order and they would perform their second poem. Five judges from the audience were randomly chosen by Mr. Taylor to provide a score for each poem after the performer was finished. The scoring system was Olympic style with the lowest being 0.0 a, “piece of garbage” and the highest being 10.9, “entering higher ground”. After each poem, Jash would relay back to the audience the scores, in order of highest to lowest. There were four poets performing overall. Rachel, a graduate of Bel Air High School in 2009 was the first poet to perform. Rachel received an overall score of 24.7 for the first round but only had one poem to perform that night. As a result she did not continue onto the second round. An interesting line from her poem that received snaps from the audience (the audience snaps their fingers instead of clapping when a poet is speaking to show they like one of the lines) was, “…you are my true north even in this downpour…”
Quinn Baumeister, a junior, was the second poet to perform in the first round but was the first poet to speak in the competitive part of the night. Quinn started off strong earning a score of 29.1 for the first round and brought it even higher to 29.9 for the second round. One of many memorable lines from Quinn’s second poem was, “…I was nothing more than a whisper in the soundtrack of your life…”
Next was Carrie George, also a junior. Carrie held her own on the stage even though one of the snap producing lines from her second poem was “…self-doubt was my anthem…” earning a 27.3 in the first round, then bumping it up to a 29.9 in the second round. Ending the slam was senior Gracie Rothey. Gracie had lots of outer space elements in her two poems with the snap earning line of, “…you hang in the galactic museum behind ropes of red giants…” giving her a first round score of 26.9 and a second round score of 26.5.
After all scores were tallied, Gracie received third with 53.4 points, Carrie earned second with 57 points, and Quinn took the number one title with 59 points.
Quinn spoke of the role slam poetry to her, “It’s fun because I don’t really get to perform anywhere else.”
Carrie stated that she has enjoyed the writing style, “Since third grade enrichment poetry.”
Aly Topscher, a junior commented on her experience at her first poetry slam here at BAHS, “It was very enjoyable to hear everyone’s poems and deep thoughts. It was cool to hear someone else’s experience through their poems and songs.”
The next Poetry Slam/Open Mic will be held in the beginning of December.