Welcome everybody to the The KMAC Poetry Slam event page. Below you will find the description, rules, and history of Poetry Slam. I'm sure many of you have attended some type of poetry event in the past... This is nothing like that. "Slam" is a competitive sport that incorporates spoken word poetry.

· What is a poetry slam?
A poetry slam is a competitive event in which poets perform their work and are judged by members of the audience. Typically, the host or another organizer selects the judges, who are instructed to give numerical scores (on a zero to 10 or one to 10 scale) based on the poets' content and performance.


· What are the rules?
(Though rules vary from slam to slam, the basic rules are:)

Each poem must be of the poet's own construction;

Each poet gets three minutes (plus a ten-second grace period) to read one poem. If the poet goes over time, points will be deducted from the total score. 

The poet may not use props, costumes or musical instruments;

Of the scores the poet received from the five judges, the high and low scores are dropped and the middle three are added together, giving the poet a total score of 0-30.