This contest is closed, and the results were declared at the David Sassoon Library Garden on the 10th February, 2007. You can view the the complete scoresheets for the elimination round here.

This is an attempt to give performance poetry a bit of a push, to bring some new voices out into the open, to put a little more audience participation into poetry, and, not least, to have a little fun.

Date and Venue

6.30 p.m., 10th February, 2007, at the David Sasson Library Garden

What is a Poetry Slam?

Even if you know how a conventional Slam works, please read this section. There are more than a few tweaks.

Before the Slam:

Each poet must write one poem on each theme (see below), and one on a theme of their choosing.

To be invited to compete in the Slam, you must submit one poem on any one of the themes.

The organisers/judges will short-list 20 poets from the entries. Selection criteria will be the quality of the writing and how well, in the judges’ opinion, those poems lend themselves to performance.

The selected poets will be informed of their selection only via email, by the 8th February 2007. Their participation will be confirmed only once they reply to that email and confirm that that will be able to perform at the Slam on the 10th February and that they will come prepared to perform five of their poems, one for each of the prescribed themes, and one of their choice.

At the event:

Poems on each of the themes will be read in separate rounds, in random order (a drawing of lots at the venue will decide the sequence). Participants in each round will also draw lots for their order of performance.

After each round, the judges will vote, and approximately half the poets will be eliminated, until we have a winner.

Scoring will be cumulative. Those who survive each round will carry their points with them. Actual points scored will not be revealed until the end.

Theme

There are four themes / triggers: Fire; Water; Air; and Earth.

Deadlines

For initial submission: Midnight (Indian Standard Time), 4th February, 2007.

To respond to the inviation to the Slam: noon, 9th February.

On the day of the Slam: report at the David Sasson Library, Kala Ghoda, by 6 p.m. 10th February, 2007,

How to enter

[Entries to this contest are now closed. We hope to see you next year.]

Important note on submissions (added on 29th January, 2007): Please do not put any personally identifying information in the body of your entry. By this we mean no byline, signature, credit line, copyright notice or symbol. If you have filled out the fields for name, email address and phone number, never fear, your entry is linked to that data by the system. The body of your entry is all our jury will see, and all that they want to see. Entries that ignore this will be seen to be trying to influence the jury, and will be disqualified.

Rules and Conditions

The contest is open to anyone, anywhere, with the exception of the jury. Since the main event is live on stage, selected participants must be prepared to travel to the venue (at their own expense) from wherever they are to perform their work.

Each entry must take no longer than two minutes to read aloud. Time on stage will be kept strictly, and you will be cut off if you exceed the limit.

Entries must be in English.

Entries must be your own, original work, and previously unpublished anywhere, in print or online. (We interpret “published” to mean that there was some form of editorial or jury selection and/or payment involved. So work that appeared on a personal blog or unmoderated forum is okay, but something that won you a prize somewhere is not. Something that may have been selected to be printed in a newspaper is published, whether you got paid for it or not.)

There is no entry fee.

Poems submitted remain the intellectual property of the poets, but by submitting an entry, you give the Organisers and Sponsors permission to use your entry, with no payment to you, in the Festival Blog, and as part of Press Releases (where they may be reproduced by media organisations), and in a possible special booklet or CD featuring the best of the Festival.

The decisions of the jury are final and binding, and no correspondence will be entertained regarding the jury’s decisions.

Judges

Caferati’s editors will evaluate initial submissions, filtering them down to the top twenty.

On the event day, there will be a panel of 6 judges.

The expert panel:

Sampurna Chattarji is an award-winning poet, fiction writer and translator.
Her books include The Greatest Stories Ever Told (fiction) and Abol Tabol: The Nonsense World of Sukumar Ray (translation) both published by Penguin India. Her poetry has featured on Hong Kong Radio; in the international documentary Voices in Wartimeand in First Proof: The Penguin Book of New Writing from India 2; Fulcrum Four: Fifty-six Indian Poets (1951-2005) and Imagining Ourselves, an anthology released by the International Museum of Women (IMOW) in San Francisco; as well as in Indian and international Journals such as Wasafiri, The Little Magazine and Chandrabhaga. Sampurna is an Executive Committee Member of the PEN All-India Centre, Mumbai, and on the Editorial Board of its Journal Penumbra. Her first book of poems Sight May Strike You Blind has just been published by the Sahitya Akademi.

Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist and independent curator. He is the author of ten books, including four collections of poetry, four studies of art and artists, an edited anthology and a translation. His most recent books are Baiju Parthan: A User’s Manual (Afterimage, 2006) and Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems, 1985-2005 (Penguin, 2006). Hoskote was a Fellow of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa (1995) and writer-in-residence at Villa Waldberta, Munich (2003). He has received the Sanskriti Award for Literature (1996) and also the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award (2004). As a literary organiser, Hoskote has been associated with the PEN All-India Centre and the Poetry Circle Bombay for two decades. He was President of the Poetry Circle (1992 -1997) and has been general secretary of the PEN All-India Centre since 1999. [More: poetry; essay (PDF); interview; a feature on Poetry International Web; and his book in German.]

Arundhathi Subramaniam is the author of two books of poetry: On Cleaning Bookshelves (Allied, 2001) and Where I Live (Allied, 2005). She has also co-edited Confronting Love (Penguin, 2001), an anthology of contemporary Indian love poems in English, and written The Book of Buddha (Penguin India, 2005). Her poetry has been published in several anthologies, including Reasons for Belonging (Penguin India, 2002), translated into Italian and Spanish, and presented at national and international festivals. In 2002, she was the recipient of the Charles Wallace fellowship for a writing residency at the University of Stirling, Scotland. She is the Editor of the India Domain of the Poetry International Web and in charge of ‘Chauraha’, an arts forum at the National Centre for the Performing Arts.

The Audience Panel:
Three randomly chosen members of the audience will join the experts to help judge each round.

Prizes

Prizes worth approximately Rs 3000, Rs 2000, and Rs 1000 to be won, sponsored by [to be announced].

Winners will be announced at the end of the contest, on the evening of 10th February, 2007, at the David Sasson Library Garden.

Winning entries will be featured on the Festival Blog.

Updates

All updates via the Caferati Contests newsgroup. Please make sure you’re subscribed.