Are you excited? I’m excited. Are you? Of course you are. Of course you’re excited - three hours from my writing this, 200 people will be packing Hugh’s Room to hear the 8 top slammers from the season vie for spots on the 2nd Toronto team for the nationals - and, of course, Shane “Maybe My Eye-Melting Poetry Ate Your Baby” Koyczan.

I’m still lobbying officials to have staple guns given exemptions as props. Not sure how that’ll turn out - I think the rep from Riverdale can be bought out, but the rest are tough - but expect lacerations nonetheless, even if only of the metaphorical nature.

Hugh’s Room (Bloor and Dundas)
8pm (come early for a seat)
$10

Believe it.

Wow. That three-letter word sums up the talented wordblasts we all enjoyed at the TPS Semi-Finals at the Cervejaria back room. Twelve poets sweated and emoted through two rounds, giving us enough mental nourishment to last until the finals. Here are some of the highlights, in my humble opinion:

• Krystle getting massive laughs with her “Skip-It” reference. Toys ARE funny.
• Arianna hobbling on stage like the trooper she is and belting out two brand new pieces
• Tomy Bewick floating through the room like a poetic warrior, delivering his poem with the energy we’ve come to love from Bam-Bam.
• Electric Jon’s duet with Spencer, which was awesome and brave, considering he trashed his chances at making the Finals (two point deduction for team pieces). But EJ doesn’t care about competition, which is why we dig him.
• Val rocking the second round with a new poem on self-loathing, complete with lines about Field of Dreams and masturbating to the Aunt Jemima package
• The White Noise Machine giving Advertising a new flavour, as he does every time he performs his now-classic piece
• Jill Binder getting heavy on us one round, and then flipping the script and going funny. Well done.

Not to be missed was R.C. Weslowski’s set after round one. The Vancouver spoken word master didn’t disappoint audiences who were hungry to learn how the night was filled with poetry, thanks to Steve Nash. We also gobbled up his call-and-response pieces, and many of us will forever the risque jokery of his Terry Fox bit. Who knew Toronto audiences could be so sensitive?

When the dust settled, the scores (courtesy of Shram) gave us the top 8 moving on to the Finals. In order from highest to lowest, here are the poets you’ll be hearing on July 21:

So mark your calendar and Facebook your friends — the July 21 Finals are shaping up to be another fun and electric night. And thanks for supporting spoken word in the city.

Finally, the semi-finalists for the TPS playoffs have confirmed their participation to the June 23 event. After a couple weeks of emailing and phone correspondence, I heard back from everyone and there has been a few changes since the initial announcement. And now the final 12 semi-finalists, with a brief explanation below:

Truth Is
The White Noise Machine
Amanda Hiebert
Krystle Mullin
Jill Binder
Tomy Bewick
Ariana
Joe Dewar
Valentino Assenza
Dane Jah Ras
Electric Jon
Gypsy Eyes

What happened? Boona and That Brown Bastard dropped out of the semi-finals, allowing Electric Jon and Gypsy Eyes to make the cut (they were next in line, mathematically).

It’s shaping up to be an insanely enjoyable semi-finals slam. There’s tons of talent, nice diversity, and a wide range of styles peppering the final 12. Remember, the top 8 move on to July’s playoff finals.

See you on the 23rd!

R.D. completely naked. Jill Binder performing with live art. A chicken suit. Those were some of the highlights at May’s Anything Goes slam, which encouraged poets to think outside the rule box. Costumes, music, multimedia and bird-suits were allowed, and poets let their creativity glisten. Through the night we saw Jill use a PowerPoint presentation to act as her inner voice, and Val shone with his best performance of the “gino poem” complete with sunglasses and cigarette-in-T-shirt-sleeve.

There were some grumblings about a rebel judge giving 10s through most of the night, but that’s what happens when a video DJ from Winnipeg named Richard Altman is chosen as a judge (Dementia 5 lovers are well-acquainted with his mash-up vids). The scores were generally favourable through the night, dipping massively only for R.D.’s scream-poem in which he stripped down. Finally, we’ve had nudity on stage at Toronto Poetry Slam. Let the nudist poets come out of the closet!

In the third round, the packed El Mocambo audience was treated to some sparkling talent: Kate stormed through the slam with well-crafted poems that were both touching and vivid; Valentino showed us remarkable range by giving us the funny, the tender and the rowdy all in one set; and Truth Is won the audience over so quickly with her power-punch style, she came out the TPS victor with a solid 29.

The feature performer Wordburglar held down the end of the night with a tight set of snappy punchline rhymes and dope beats. Too bad the tired standin’ folk had to leave before he rocked the floor, but it was their loss: ‘Burg got the place jumpin with his last two songs, as many poets started shakin’ their booties like it was 1999.

Very soon, our dear webmaster will post the final scores from May, thus letting us know which poets made it into the semi’s. I will be contacting those poets individually to give them notice. The semi finals begin on June 23 at Cervejaria and that’s bound to be a hype show. Perhaps the Best. Show. Ever. Yeah, I said it.

National Poetry Month brings out the poet in everyone, which explained the large amount of rookies rocking the Drake Hotel stage at the Toronto Poetry Slam on April 14. The newbies sported some colourful names — Tripp, Reflect, Awd (sacrificial) — and their poetry ran the gamut from hip-hop a capella to blunt blog-entry poems. Ariel, the most beloved of the rooks, made the third round while Tripp impressed the judges enough to slip into the second round.

The most striking part of last night’s slam was the judging stinginess. Several poets got scores below 6, and barely any judges hovered above the 9.0 mark. In a TPS first, celeb judge Mark Kingwell gave R.D. an unprecedented 0. Yes, a 0. The judging tightness made for some scary low scores that can hurt a poet’s overall standings in vying for the team, but that also meant it was anyone’s slam. In the third round, Arianna, Krystle and Ariel competed in a rare all-female final bout.

Krystle wowed the 170+ crowd by inviting Soulfistikato to join her on stage for a beatbox-poetry combo, giving the audience a much-needed surge of energy. After Ariel dropped a heartfelt slice-of-life poem, Arianna busted one of her classic autobiographical pieces that earned her the top spot in the third round, and winning her a berth into the semi-finals in June. Congrats, Ar!

This month is insanely busy for spoken word poetry, so please check the listings section of this site for a local event droppin’ near you. Also, come out to the May 20 Anything Goes slam at the El Mocambo, featuring indie rapper Wordburglar.

Until then, peace love and poetry!

• Joe Fiorito covered the story slam in one of his recent columns for the Star.

  What was I doing there? I have told narrative tales before, sometimes in this space; my ear is always bent. I was asked to be a judge.

  Judging is subjective, but if I were a publisher on the lookout for the Next Big Bright Young Thing, I’d troll the story slams for talent.

• We now have an online event listings submission thing, which people apparently like, since three new events have been posted in the two days since it went live (there is no reason for you to not experience some spoken word in the coming week). Use it to tell us about your events.

Storytelling took centre stage at Cervejaria for Toronto Poetry Slam’s first ever Story Slam. The night was filled with entertaining stories about workplace horrors (thanks Joe), fur trader tales (kudos to Ann) and the inane rituals of an average Toronto hospital (Mike Smith is a funny man).

After the first round, the packed house was treated to one of the best spoken word troupes in the world, The Fugitives from Vancouver. Besides being incredibly awesome human beings, The Fugitives tickled our cerebrals with music-poetry hybrid folk-song-stories. The crowd was mesmerized (trust me, I counted the unblinking eyes staring in awe). Their set perfectly set up the powerful poetry that descended on our ears in the second round.

Amanda’s piece about her mom (a TPS classic, by now) wowed the judges, even the usually low-scoring Joe Fiorito of the Toronto Star. Then Mike Smith brought down the house with a killer piece on a police confrontation, which had everyone clapping for more.

In the third round, Tomy Bewick almost brought a certain slammaster to tears with his piece on a friend ravaged by substance abuse. But it was Amanda’s knack for storytelling poetry that earned her first place, and a berth into the semi-finals in June. Well-deserved win, Amanda!

Keep checking this site for updates, and hope to see all you spoken word fans at the April show at the Drake, featuring Barbara Adler (cuz we didn’t get enough of her with the Fugitives).

…we now have a picture gallery.

At the moment it just contains a selection of Emily Muir’s pictures from the January slam. Others will be added in the near future.

Feel free to leave comments on them. And if any of you wordlovers have TPS snaps of your own that you’d like to share, let’s talk. Email me at webmaster AT torontopoetryslam DOT com .

Rules to March’s Story Slam have been posted- but not in narrative form, so Dave loses two points.

Team qualifier standings updated here. Detailed scores here. - the web guy

It was a slam to remember for many reasons: Record amount of possible competitors, 23 vying for 12 slots; the most amount of audience/fans in recent memory, with the unofficial tally coming close to 170 through the night; first time Krystle Mullin has won a Toronto Poetry Slam, even though she’s been on the slam team at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word; and also the first time Valentino Assenza has made the third round, which he wonderfully deserves.

February’s slam featured raucous applause for Electric Jon’s power-raps, Truth Is’ emotional thunderclaps and guest feature Ritallin’s soulful poem-songs. Everyone in the crowd elevated the energy to an unprecedented level, and from the stage I could feel the love in cool little wavey thingies. It was beautiful.

The final round saw Truth, Valentino and Krystle battle for a playoff berth and $75, with Krystle scoring the highest and winning mad love from practically everyone in the room.

Props to birthday girl ‘Tasha — and Tomy Bewick’s sweet birthday call-out — and guest judge DJ Abdominal.

Look forward to seeing you at the Feb. 24 Last Call Poets slam (see Listings) and the next TPS on March 24.