Each Monday night my friends Ellisa, Brian, Shaun, Laura and I pile into my car, and we travel to Chilli Pepper’s on the market in Roanoke. We walk in, and usually there are few people present, only the die-hards there to eat the food that is not too bad and see who is going to perform ahead of time. People start to filter in at about 8:45 or so.

The fun starts at 9:00, however. That is when the poets perform. Now, I do not mean read it hunched over a microphone, speaking in a monotone voice. That is a poetry reading. This is a slam, baby. That means the poet provides an audible and visual performance, as well as a literary one. One never knows what to expect when a poet performs for the first time. After a few performances, a poet develops his/her "style," as I will put it. It is not uncommon to see a performing poet running about in the bar while the audience stares in awe. Poets are judged without a lot of "bad structure" by audience members who have volunteered for the duty or were picked by the emcee.

There are some great poets. I will name a few. Dennis Simpson has a very loose performance. His poetry is unlike any I have ever heard. He floats about the room with a very curvy voice, involving the audience very well. At the end of a Dennis poem, the meaning of it hits you like an epiphany. Todd Pack, the coveted SlamMaster and all-around gremlin, has a very vital voice. He has an extremely effective tone in his poetry that is the perfect meld of intelligence and indispensable wit. One of his pieces, "Art Attack," involves some rather innovative hand motions.

On a personal level, the Slam has infiltrated my life in a superb way. A poet, no matter how good his/her performance, is respected. The aura of egalitarianism is astonishing. When I first performed, I placed third, a phenomenon Todd had only seen once. He wanted me to come back. I came back, and I placed third again. Ellisa read one night, and, to my delight, she kicked my butt and tied for first with Todd. The amount of encouragement any poet feels is immeasurable. There are no breathing-down-the-neck literary critics hovering about to dissect your work piece by piece and shame you about the incredible moral dilemma you did not cover in your poem.

There is lots of inspiration to be found in the Poetry Slam. If the attitudes of the people do not intrigue you to get out your pen and paper, the people themselves will. This is not just a hang-out for teens and real young adults. There are people my parents’ age in attendance, along with some people twice my parents’ age. I wrote one of my best pieces in a ten-minute frenzy after seeing a shirt someone was wearing. I don’t know how to explain it; I write better with company who understand what I am doing and with whom I am on one level or another.