It seems like every month we have new blood come through and tear the roof off. Will it be YOU this month?
If you’ve never been to a poetry slam, it goes like this:
- We have 2 rounds, so all poets must be ready with 2 poems to perform.
- Five judges will be selected from the audience to score all the poems.
- All poems must be of the performer’s own original composition.
- Poems must come in under 3 minutes and ten seconds, or points will be deducted.
- No props are allowed, and no musical accompaniment that the performer can’t make with his/her own body.
And that’s it! Sign-ups are open to the public starting at 6:30P, and there’s NO CHARGE to come watch or sign up to compete, which means more money in your pocket to buy merch from our touring feature or to fill yourself up on the wonderful food and libations available from our host venue, Yayo Taco!
DON’T THINK YOU’RE READY TO SLAM YET?
That’s cool! We’ve got a FREE TWO-HOUR WORKSHOP run by our feature, John Survivor Blake, where he’ll put his wealth of knowledge and experience in the slam scene on display to help you and everyone else hone their stage and page skills to become better slam poets!
This month’s feature is John Survivor Blake, a multiple time National Poetry Slam and Individual World Poetry Slam competitor. He’s toured all over the nation teaching and performing, and now he’s coming here to Vegas to give us one hell of a show! Survivor will have 6 books available, so make sure to bring some extra money to support the touring poet and take home some great merch!
————————–——————
You see them every day; addicts, homeless and hopeless, asking for change, seemingly stuck in a deadly cycle. We all are small degrees of separation from someone in this circumstance. This is the story of one man and his fight against the drown, back to the surface. John “Survivor” Blake will tell you he simply loves poetry; what happens when one speaks and another listens with little effort. He will not brag about what he has overcome. Instead, he confesses that he loves when the almost-quit realize this will get better, realize this because John Survivor Blake is still here, but he will say “If it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else”. We know better.
John Survivor Blake will claim to be “fortunate” as opposed to being successful; addicted to heroin and alcohol, endured poverty in the Baruch Housing Projects on the lower east side of Manhattan, stretched but never snapped at the hands of chemically addicted parents. Survivor believes his biracial experiences have enabled him to understand two sides of a cultural sword. He will say that spending his adolescence visiting his mother in prison was divine intervention. He will tell you that burying his father from AIDS has taught him how to forgive. John Survivor Blake has beaten more than odds.
Now, a recovering addict and alcoholic, he has managed to escape what took the lives of his entire family, and has now been published in Naugatuck River Review Journal of Narrative Poetry, BeyondRaceMag, InTheFray Mag, PenIt Mag, Urban Weekly, and Adobe Walls. He’s also shared performance stages with Saul Williams, Tara Hardy, Amiri Baraka, Suheir Hammad, Tara Betts, and many, many others. He’s toured the United States; over 100 cities, facilitated writing and performance workshops as well as lectured at many universities: Columbia, Drury, Westchester Community, Virginia Tech and more.
He’s done this because he believes poetry saved his life and he is simply making said life one gigantic Thank You card. John has facilitated workshops for youth organizations and festivals as well as classrooms nationwide. This is what he lives for.
After facilitating writing and performance workshops, coaching both youth and adult poetry slam teams for the Slam Richmond Reading Series in Virginia for four years, John is still instructing poetry for young writers, now at Warehouse508 in Albuquerque, and outreach through writing at Santa Fe’s Juvenile Detention Center.
John Survivor Blake is not concerned with where he’s been, but where all of us are going!
