Bastardslam @ Kreuzberg 13.11.11.
Sunday night...yeah, one of the first Winter Nights of the year...that calm wind which silently freezes you to death when getting off from the U-Bahn One of those nights that make you think “Why haven’t I moved to Florida instead of Berlin?
Ok, let’s talk about the event: it’s a Poetry Slam....just a vague idea of what was about to happen. The classical questions in mind: What to expect from this night? How to manage my presentation about something “new” for me? How many people will be in the place? How long does the event last....where and what to eat after the “show”? But first of all....how to find the place in which the event was about to start?
Eight o’clock at the Festsaal in Kreuzberg, quite easy to find...just a few minutes from Kottbusser Tor u-Bahn station. Too easy to be true, in fact the location of the event had changed, it was supposed to be a few meters away from where it was supposed to happen.
Monarch, Skalitzer Straße 134 10999 Berlin
Sunday night...yeah, one of the first Winter Nights of the year...that calm wind which silently freezes you to death when getting off from the U-Bahn One of those nights that make you think “Why haven’t I moved to Florida instead of Berlin?
Ok, let’s talk about the event: it’s a Poetry Slam....just a vague idea of what was about to happen. The classical questions in mind: What to expect from this night? How to manage my presentation about something “new” for me? How many people will be in the place? How long does the event last....where and what to eat after the “show”? But first of all....how to find the place in which the event was about to start?
Eight o’clock at the Festsaal in Kreuzberg, quite easy to find...just a few minutes from Kottbusser Tor u-Bahn station. Too easy to be true, in fact the location of the event had changed, it was supposed to be a few meters away from where it was supposed to happen.
Monarch, Skalitzer Straße 134 10999 Berlin
What was expected to be an entrance was more or less a little door in front of a Kebab Imbiss. Nothing to recognize it as an entrance door, especially because of the sign which was hanging above it: “Turkish Mosque” ____and next to it, sticked with scotch-tape the flyer of the event. A few stairs and here's a man to welcome the audience at the entrance of the Bar____more than a welcome it was a: “Welcome! It’s 5 euros....enjoy your evening”
Here we are! Low lights, a curtain of smoke waiting for us that made difficult to understand the shape of the room. Not so many people, low music, a bar in the middle and a stage at the bottom of the room, a disco-ball hanging on the top of the console. People chatting - clinking of glasses - cigarettes burning. Most of the people there were German, of course....we are in Berlin...why would it be different this time? After a few chats with my friends, I’ve realized that what was just a “bunch of people” became a “now more seats available”....[we were around 60 _70 people, the place was relatively small].
One of the first things I noticed was the fact that the audience was young, I think the eldest people in the room were the bartender and one of the MCs. If an event like this was to take place in Venice [were I am from], first the room would have been half empty and the only people attending the slam would have been old ladies, the parents of the poets and...the bartender? What to expect from a city which doesn’t even have a Cinema?
It really seemed a large group of friends, and from the fact that most of them knew each other, it probably is a solid community of regulars.
20.30. The music stopped, the only light except the ones pointing the stage were the ambulances blue-lights which filtered from the street below us, and the shining yellow ones of the U-bahn running just outside the window.
The two MCs Introduced the evening, the event and they set the Applause meter (the ears of the two MCs...), on the base of which the poems were scored...so it started!
A list of names was read to the audience and after every single name a sea of applauses.
The audience was very active: just a few seconds between the end of the poem and the blast of applauses.
It didn’t take long to understand that it wouldn’t have been an easy evening: most of the poets performed in German____and my German was far below from the level requested to actually enjoy them! But, in order not to fall asleep in the ashtray-atmosphere, I’ve decided to start to take advantages of my handicapped-understanding-German situation: poems are not just words, significance, meaning. For the first time as an audience I’ve experienced what I could translate in words as “meaningless-listening”: what for the rest of the audience were stories, emotions, life-experiences put in words, for me they were colors, rhythms, voices and repeating sounds. It was actually a great experience, especially because I could focus on the “formal” way in which poets composed their poems. Even if with a few of them it was really complicated to find a pattern in their lines, for most of them it seemed that there was a sound that as a response had a similar one in the same way as a musician chooses the tunes and notes to create a symphony. With some poets it was almost self-evident, some of them composed the poems they performed as a stream a sounds, one similar to the other, and it was really difficult to distinguish the line between poem and song. But I will go back to this feeling later on.
The first round of slam were followed by other two, with a pause of 15 minutes between them, just the time to order a beer at the Bar.
When my strength was about to leave me, the MCs announced the only poet who performed in English, Paula Varjack. Two poems in a row, she raptured the audience, total silence except her voice.
I have to admit that I've always had a problem with poetry reading, it might sound old fashioned, but I need to read a poem and listen to it. In a sort of way I need a piece of paper, take time to read it, read it twice, maybe stop and think over some lines more than the others; it's something that helps me to interiorize the poem, to make it mine. During a reading, or in this case in a slam, you don't have that time, you don't have the possibility to see the shape of the words on the sheet, you don't have the perception of how this poem looks like: everything is fast.But this time there was something more, there was that sparkling which is most of the time missing in the cold-detached readings, offered, for example, in a book shop. And this "more" is to be found in the way these poems were read - acted.
In the final match only three of them were classified as finalists, but the real match at the end was between Chaterine de la Roche and Paula Varjack. It took several rounds of applause to understand that Paula “won” the Slam that night.
The first round of slam were followed by other two, with a pause of 15 minutes between them, just the time to order a beer at the Bar.
When my strength was about to leave me, the MCs announced the only poet who performed in English, Paula Varjack. Two poems in a row, she raptured the audience, total silence except her voice.
I have to admit that I've always had a problem with poetry reading, it might sound old fashioned, but I need to read a poem and listen to it. In a sort of way I need a piece of paper, take time to read it, read it twice, maybe stop and think over some lines more than the others; it's something that helps me to interiorize the poem, to make it mine. During a reading, or in this case in a slam, you don't have that time, you don't have the possibility to see the shape of the words on the sheet, you don't have the perception of how this poem looks like: everything is fast.But this time there was something more, there was that sparkling which is most of the time missing in the cold-detached readings, offered, for example, in a book shop. And this "more" is to be found in the way these poems were read - acted.
In the final match only three of them were classified as finalists, but the real match at the end was between Chaterine de la Roche and Paula Varjack. It took several rounds of applause to understand that Paula “won” the Slam that night.
When I got out, a question was wandering in my mind: i have to admit that it was my first experience with a Poetry-slam, but I couldn’t help but comparing it with many theater-performances I had the chance to attend in my life: like the actor when acting, in a sort of way, leaves his persona to embody a new character, here the poet left behind his/her persona to embody his/her words and give life to them. It was like being involved into their experience, a quick intense immersion in the feelings which generated that particular poem.
Bis bald