How Boston, Cambridge and Somerville got a poetry encore

Guest commentary by NPS volunteer Kevin Spak

“Simone Beaubien Ruins the National Poetry Slam!” That was the tongue-in-cheek headline in the Tattler, slam’s underground comedy/gossip zine on the night of the finals of the 2011 National Poetry Slam in Boston. Beaubien, the tournament’s host city director grinned. Around her, the Berklee Performance Center buzzed with anticipation. The place was completely sold out. The audience had been waiting for hours in a line that snaked around three blocks. In the Tattler article, imaginary poets complained endlessly about the crowds that had greeted them all week, the long lines filled with excited audiences eager to hear their poetry.

Never in the event's more than 20-year history had this many people come out to see the National Poetry Slam, and while most poets were thrilled, some had muttered darkly about the lines, and a few had even sent angry emails complaining. Hadn’t the Boston crew anticipated the demand?

The truth was, we hadn’t. Sure, the Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge sells out its weekly poetry show every Wednesday, but NPS is a sprawling event, drawing teams from around the country to compete in a massive, five-night tournament. The odds of selling out all 46 bouts seemed astronomical. On the rainy first night of the competition, the street team had printed hundreds of “Early Bird” fliers offering dirt-cheap admittance to anyone who would show up to the bouts early. 

By 6:30 that evening, word began to trickle in, passing between volunteers in excited text messages: the bouts were selling out. All of them. In some places, as the night’s first round of bouts started, people were already lining up for the second. “We had people waiting for two hours in the rain to see poetry,” recalls veteran slammer Mckendy Fils-Aimé, who will be representing Manchester’s Slam Free or Die this year. “We’d never seen anything like it.” Somehow, poetry had become the hottest ticket in town.

Part of the credit no doubt belongs to the Boston team of volunteers. Beaubien had gathered an incredibly competent, all-volunteer staff of local slam regulars to run a year-long promotional campaign. But past cities had made similar efforts. “I think Boston just has a really great poetry audience,” says Beaubien. “We have so many students, so many artists, so many people who appreciate the spoken word. But even we underestimated just how many.”

By the night of finals, whispers had already begun. Would Boston become the new home of NPS? “Right away, we knew it would come back,” Beaubien says. “I thought, maybe in 2015 we’d be crazy enough to try it again.”

But when some scheduling conflicts developed in another city that had been accepted to host NPS 2013, Poetry Slam, Inc., the non-profit governing body for slam, asked Beaubien if she could push up that timetable. “We knew Boston had the people and the know-how to do it,” says PSi President Henry Sampson. “And after the success of 2011, people were going to be excited to go back there.”

And this time, the Boston crew is prepared. “We’re getting bigger venues across the board,” says 2013 venue liaison and Boston Poetry Slam team member Nora Meiners. “Now that we know how many people around here love poetry, it’s kind of a no-brainer. Bigger is better, and we’re expecting huge crowds!”