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.The slam made its debut at Kala Ghoda in 2007 (the first in India, actually) to much enjoyment from the audience and the participants, and returned in 2008 to just as much enthusiasm and support.
Themes
There are three themes:
Rock
Paper
Scissors
You must also have one more poem—your choice of theme—which we’ll call the ‘Free Poem.’
Date and Venue
6:10 p.m., 15th February, 2009, at the David Sassoon Library Garden
Deadlines
For initial submission via the web link: Midnight (Indian Standard Time), 8th February, 2009.
To respond to the invitation to the Slam: noon, 13 February, 2008.
On the day of the Slam, 15th February 2008: report to the Open Desk at the David Sasson Library, Kala Ghoda, by 5.30 p.m.
How our Poetry Slam works
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 Themes, above), and one on a theme of their choosing, the “free poem.”
To be invited to compete in the Slam, you must submit one poem on any one of the themes, not your Free Poem.
The organisers/judges will short-list a maximum of 12 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, if we can manage it, 12th February 2009. 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 15th February and that they will come prepared to perform four 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 performed in separate rounds, in random order. Participants in each round will also perform in random order.
After each round, the judges will vote, and the competitors with the lowest points in that round will be eliminated, until we have a winner. The exact number that will be eliminated in each round will be decided depending on the number of participants selected to compete in the Slam, and will be announced before the performances start.
Scoring will be cumulative. Those who survive each round will carry their points with them. Elimination in each round will be based on total scores up to that point. In case of a tie, the totals from that specific previous rounds will be used as a tie-breaker.
Rules and Conditions
Submit one poem on any one of the themes (but not your Free Poem), at the link provided below.
Please re-read and edit your entry before you submit. If you discover an error only after you get your acknowledgement email, and then resubmit a corrected entry, our contest engine may delete both entries as duplicates. If our screening jury finds almost identical entries that have slipped past the contest engine, they will delete both entries. Please also do not even think of emailing us and asking us to edit your entry in the contest database. We’ll just delete your entry and won’t tell you we’ve done so.
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.
The contest is open to anyone, anywhere, with the exception of the jury or their family members. No, to make it absolutely clear, it doesn’t matter if you’ve been published or not, whether you’ve performed before or not.
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 perform. 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.
Participants selected for the Slam can, on stage, read, recite, declaim, shout, or sing their words. They can stand still, gesture, pace, even jump and up and down. They will be judged on both the quality of the words they perform and the performance itself.
Do not send in duplicate entries of the same work or make multiple submissions of different works. We will delete all your entries from the system if you flood it.
There is no entry fee.
Submissions remain the intellectual property of the entrants, but by submitting an entry, you give the the Kala Ghoda Association, the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival and its Sponsors, and Caferati permission to use your entry, with acknowledgement, but with no payment to you, in their websites, 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 not more than twenty.
On the event day, there will be a panel of 6 judges.
The expert panel:
Arundhathi Subramaniam is a poet, writer, editor and curator. She is the author of two books of poetry: On Cleaning Bookshelves (Allied, 2001) and Where I Live (Allied, 2005). Her third volume of new and selected poems is due to be published by Bloodaxe in February 2009. She has co-edited an anthology of Indian love poems in English (Confronting Love, Penguin, 2005). She is also the author of a prose work, The Book of Buddha (Penguin India, 2005). She lives in Mumbai and has, since 2004, been the Editor of the India domain of the Poetry International Web.
Denzil Smith has played an important role in the development of Indian theatre in English. Over the last two decades, he has delivered memorable performances in plays like Waiting for Godot, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial and The Odd Couple directed by Naseerudin Shah; A Life in the Theater, Rathod the Cockroach Killer and Spider directed by Zubin Driver; On A Muggy Night in Mumbai, Zenkatha and Sammy directed by Lillette Dubey; Letters to a Daughter from Prison directed by Vijaya Mehta, Blood Brothers by Noel Godin; Once on a Friday by Carl Mendes; The Urban Burden by Quasar Thakore Padamsee; Sambhog Se Sayas Tak by Satyadev Dubey; and Come back to the Forum, Guy Lafleur, Guy Lafleur directed by Rick Sherman which opened at the Toronto Fringe Festival.
A prolific actor and voice artist, Denzil played the lead role in the BBC radio play Mricchakatika and has also been touring Europe extensively with Merchants of Bollywood. He has acted in Hindi films as well as international projects, including One Night with the King with Omar Sharif. Other films include Mango Soufflé, Paap, Shobhayatra, Ek Ajnabee, The Memsahib, Frozen, Mumbai Salsa, Shourya, and the forthcoming Lamhaa.
Denzil Smith is also the founder of Stagesmith, which recently produced the very successful play Jazz.
Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist and curator of international contemporary art. He has authored fifteen books, including Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems 1985-2005 (Penguin, 2006), Die Ankunft der Vögel (Hanser, 2006), Kampfabsage (with Ilija Trojanow; Random House/ Blessing Verlag, 2007), The Crafting of Reality: Sudhir Patwardhan, Drawings (The Guild, 2008), and Pale Ancestors (with Atul Dodiya; Bodhi Art, 2008). His plays, Karna, The Last Annal of Alamgir and Aftermath were performed recently at the Y B Chavan Centre and the Prithvi Theatre, Bombay.
Hoskote was a Fellow of the International Writing Program, University of Iowa (1995) and writer-in-residence at Villa Waldberta, Munich (2003). His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry Review, Fulcrum, Nthposition, The Iowa Review, The Green Integer Review, Wasafiri, and Akzente.
Hoskote has curated fifteen exhibitions, including a mid-career retrospective of Atul Dodiya (Japan Foundation, Tokyo, 2001) and a lifetime retrospective of Jehangir Sabavala (National Gallery of Modern Art, Bombay and New Delhi, 2005-2006). Hoskote was co-curator of the 7th Gwangju Biennale (Korea, 2008).
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.
Winners will be announced at the end of the contest, on the evening of 15th February, 2009, at the David Sassoon Library Garden.
Updates
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How to enter
Sorry, this contest is now closed. We hope to see you at next year’s contests. The Caferati Contests newsgroup will keep you informed about any other contests we run, so do please stay subscribed.
