The Grand Slam for Team NGS will be taking place on Tuesday, May 19, but before that we have to get all of the competitors lined up. On Tuesday, May 5 at The Low Beat, we will be hosting the Wild Card / Last Chance Slam with the top two poets of the night moving on to the Grand Slam.
This event and the preceding tournament is to choose members for the 2015 team to represent Nitty Gritty Slam at poetry and spoken word events this year. The winning poet at the end of #NGS93 will move on to the Grand Slam joining a dynamic group of poets including Kevin Peterson (Season 3 Champion of Champions), Amani, Samson Dikeman, Elizag, Daniel Summerhill, Poetic Visionz, and L-Majesty.
This is a special slam open to everyone who would like to be a part of #TeamNittyGritty 2015 and who is not already entered in the Grand Slam. There will also be an open mic for poets who want to share their work.
And if that is not enough for one night, we’re also going to welcome Christopher Johnson as our featured poet!
Known mostly for his constant evolving style Christopher Johnson without complaint, combines the experience discord of his past, the wisdom of now and the hope of the future to give voice to a universal message of human spark that connects us all. Using the intricate combination of academia, hip hop, traditional story telling, theater, and just plain old common sense, Christopher provides a soulful uplifting experience guaranteed to move his audience through several states of equilibrium, challenging the listener to remain in an emotional stagnant state. When asked to describe himself, he uses one word; Entropy.
Christopher resides in Providence Rhode Island where he organizes Spoken word events, gives workshops on writing, performing, as well as growth and empowerment through words. He has been an active community member of Brown University’s student spoken word/poetry organization “Word!” since it’s second year of conception, 2004. In 2010, Christopher was commissioned by Providence’s Department of Art Culture and Tourism to write the poem “Providence Divine” to commemorate the city’s 375th birthday.
Christopher has slammed on many National Slam teams and competed in five individual world poetry slams never ranking less than top 30. In 2007 Christopher won the spoken word category in the Famecast.com international competition beating out over a thousand poets from around the world for the top prize. Of his most recent accomplishments, Christopher was commissioned by Brown University to write and perform the inaugural poem of it’s 19th President and was the 2013 Providence Grand Slam Champion as well as the 2013 North Beast Slam Champion.
If you can’t make it out to the show that night, be sure to follow along on Twitter! We will be live tweeting pictures and results all night at @NittyGrittySlam and #NGS93.
Sign up begins at 7:00pm, open mic starts at 7:30, and then Thom Francis starts the slam at 8:00pm.
Admission is $5.00 ($3.00 with student ID). This is an 18+ show.
Albany Poets, Urban Guerilla Theatre, and The Frequency North Reading Series have brought slam back to Albany with the Nitty Gritty Slam at The Low Beat (335 Central Ave.) on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday’s of each month.
For information on the rules and format of the Nitty Gritty Slam and to meet the team, go to http://nittygrittyslam.com.
Comments are closed.