How Boston Got the National Poetry Slam

Press release from NPS 2011:  

The story of how one determined woman returned the Boston Poetry Slam to glory.  

 CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — To be fair, it was snowing. And her featured performer was not a household name. But as she looked around the almost empty bar, Simone Beaubien felt a knot in the pit of her stomach. “Oh god,” she thought, “I’m going to be the SlamMaster who killed the Boston Poetry Slam.” 

That was in 2004. Flash forward to April 27, 2011. The downstairs of the Cantab Lounge is, as it often is these days, so packed that they’ve had to lock the doors. Usually, some of these people would have cleared out after the open mic—but not tonight. Tonight is special. “Tonight,” Beaubien tells the crowd, “we are going to pick the five poets who will represent the hometown team this year at the National Poetry Slam right here in Boston and Cambridge.” The applause is deafening.

There was no small amount of pride in her voice. She had almost singlehandedly convinced Poetry Slam Inc. to host the 2011 National Poetry Slam—its flagship team championship competition—in Boston. And to hear her tell it, it wasn’t that hard. “It didn’t take much convincing,” Beaubien says. “We’re one of the oldest slams in the world, and we have a great reputation both as writers and listeners.”

Indeed, the last time Boston hosted NPS was in 1992, when slam was young, and Beaubien’s predecessors—Michael Brown and Patricia Smith—had just founded Boston’s venue. It was the third NPS ever held, and only 16 teams competed. That event is often credited with being the first to focus national attention on a slam outside of the medium’s Chicago birthplace. “We made a conscious decision to send the slam to Boston, to free it and let it grow,” slam inventor Marc Smith once remarked. Soon after, slam exploded in New England, with a number of readings cropping up in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Some of those slams have disappeared in the years since, and several others sprung up, but the Boston Poetry Slam—which won the title that year, and the next year, and finished in the top four the following two years—was on the map and here to stay.

Beaubien first stumbled on the venue in 1999. “I actually found my way to poetry slam through one of Boston’s most famous slammer-storytellers, Jack McCarthy, who ran into me at a library poetry reading in my hometown of Chelmsford,” she explains. 

McCarthy remembers the reading well. “She did a poem that had elephants in it, and I was blown away,” he recalls. “Chelmsford held that slam twice a year, and every time I’d see and hear Simone, I’d tell her she belonged at the Cantab. She and I argue about how many Chelmsford slams it took to get her to Mass. Ave, but once she got there, the rest is… poetry.”

“It only took one night and I was hooked,” Beaubien recalls. Still, she never expected to wind up in charge of the place. But when first Smith and then Brown departed with no obvious successor, she stepped up to the plate. “I looked around and said, ‘Someone has to keep this place going, and I think it has to be me,’” she says.

And that’s how she wound up presiding over that empty room that dreary night in 2004. “We were a divided community for a while,” recalls Cantab bartender and veteran poet Adam Stone. “There were people who left because they didn’t like the previous organizer, and there were people who left because they didn’t think anyone else would be as good as the previous organizer.” But then a funny thing happened: “Simone ended up being one of the best organizers in slam,” Stone says. “When I went on tour last fall, every host of every venue I featured at said something to the effect of ‘I think tonight’s show went really well.  I mean, it wasn’t Simone good, but it was close, right?’”

Brown too was pleased with the results. “When an old man looks for someone to take over his labor of love, he hopes for a son or daughter who can exceed what he has accomplished,” he once remarked. “That is what I found since Simone Beaubien took over the Cantab. She has created a persona beyond anyone who went before her.”

Beaubien quickly developed a knack for booking top talent, and a reputation for running a tight ship. Before long, audiences returned, and with them a new generation of star slammers. At NPS 2008 in Madison, Wisconsin, Beaubien led the team to its first Finals stage appearance since 1995. And this time, the number of teams they were competing against had ballooned to 75.

At the same time, Beaubien was bringing New England’s venues closer together. She founded and ran the New England Slam League, a recreational summer slam league. In 2008, that spun off and became the annual NorthBEAST Regional Poetry Slam, riffing off the name coined by Providence’s vibrant youth scene. Today, there are nine teams in the NorthBEAST collective, including slams in Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and, of course, Massachusetts. Cambridge actually has two slams—the second, the Lizard Lounge Poetry Jam, was founded in 2000, and will also be hosting events at Nationals this year.

These days, the Cantab is filled to capacity nearly every Wednesday night, the open mic list fills up as soon as the doors open, and Beaubien is focused on running the biggest show in slam. Poetry Slam, Inc. is once again expecting over 70 teams from across North America. “If anyone can do it, it’s Simone,” says Cantab coach Brian S. Ellis. “What she’s done for this community is absolutely amazing.”For Beaubien’s part, she thinks the community itself deserves the credit. “Poets who come here are always amazed at the quality of Boston audiences,” she says. “We’ve been in this game longer than just about anyone, so we’ve got a tradition, we’ve got a voice, and we know how to listen.”

Mock Interview With Simone Beaubien

*For the uninitiated, what is Poetry Slam?*

Our hosts often introduce the poetry slam as “the art of competitive performance poetry,” which is the simplest way we can think of to explain it; poetry slam is a fast-paced competition where poets have limited time to the impress judges we randomly select from the audience. Spectators will see all kinds of work they might never have imagined, poems that sound like storytelling, songwriting, and stand-up comedy, political posturing or personal affirmation. It’s a little theatre, a little rap battle, and a little stand-up-everything.

*For the uninitiated, just what is NPS?*

The National Poetry Slam is the biggest poetry slam slam in the world. Unlike most poetry slam tournaments, it’s a team event, so it’s a great chance to see coaches and all-stars strategize to bring their best work to the stage for maximum effect against their opponents. The event is also a huge festival and gathering for a community that only gets to meet once per year to compete, listen, and crown the ultimate champions.

*What is this Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge I keep hearing so much about, and how is it related to NPS?*

The Boston Poetry Slam is a two-decade tradition that calls the Cantab Lounge in Central Square in Cambridge home; every Wednesday, we hold an open mic, featured poet, and open poetry slam where anyone may compete. We’ve attended the National Poetry Slam every year since 1991, and can claim two championships and a total of six Finals stage appearances. The BPS will act the official host slam for NPS, which means that our home community will be putting in the work to bring the national event right to our own backyard.

*What is the NorthBEAST collective?*

The NorthBEAST is our name for the collective of local slams who represent New England at NPS every year. Right now, we are nine slams strong: two in Cambridge, two in Western Mass, two in Providence, Rhode Island, and one each in Lowell, Portland, Maine, and Manchester, New Hampshire. The NorthBEAST slams have a reputation as very strong opponents at the National Poetry Slam, in part because we compete against one another fiercely here at home, but support each other just as fiercely at NPS.

*How is slam different now than it was when Boston last held the event in 1992?*

The basic rules of slam haven’t changed a bit since Boston last held NPS: it’s still no props, no costumes, no musical accompaniment, and poems are still three minutes or less. The major difference is how popular the movement has become; the event has swelled from sixteen teams at NPS 1992 to seventy-six at NPS 2010, and we’re expecting up to eighty-four this year in Boston.

*What would you say to someone who said slam “isn’t really poetry”?*

I might ask someone who posed that question if they think jazz is music, or modern art is, indeed, art. It’s a matter of taste if it connects with the listener, but it’s firmly in the genre, and here to stay. When I perform at high schools, I like to remind students that poetry comes from the oldest of oral traditions; poets began as storytellers, actors, and myth-makers. Harold Bloom may have called slam “the death of art” back in 1991, but both art and poetry slam seem to have survived just fine.