Last night was awesome. As usual.
I was at the fourth annual Ill List poetry slam in Modesto, California. It’s a huge, invitational competition held in the State Theatre. 600+ in attendance to watch, Sonya Renee, Big Poppa E, John “Survivor” Blake, Ed Mabrey, Alvin Lau, Anis Mojgani, Scorpio Blues, Chad Sokolovsky, Adriel Lewis, and myself, compete for $1000.
I’ve performed at all of the Ill Lists in Modesto and they’re always awesome. I’ve always only ever made it into the top three, but this year…I came in the bottom three! This all thanks to my being late, missing out on the draw, taking the first slot, and the judges allowing score creep to settle. I also repeated poems from previous Ill Lists and I think that may have had some effect.
Since I knew I was mathed out by the second round, I went ahead and did a four and half minute version of Puddin’. That was incredible fun.
Sonya took first, Alvin took second, Scorpio took third, and “Survivor” took fourth. It was a good slam all around and the audience had a great time. I’d have to say that the Ill List is one of the best slams in the world. It’s pretty amazing to see such a small town come out in droves to see poetry on a cold Saturday night. Tickets for the event always sell out a day or two in advance. That’s over 600 tickets for a poetry event.
They should be holding Ill List V around this time next year. I may not be in it, but I certainly recommend to anyone in near Modesto to go check it out.
Sam Pierstorff organizes all of the Ill Lists and the regular Modesto Poetry Slams; visit them here: http://www.slamonrye.com/
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Word to the nerd.
2007: Go for it!
This entry was written by , posted on 9 December, 2007 at 2:51 PM, filed under Personal Updates and tagged california, ill list, modesto, Performance Poetry and Spoken Word, slam on rye, state theatre, theater. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.