Join us September 19th for a multi-genre open mic and a competitive poetry slam to qualify for Semi-Finals A on December 19th.
Our sign-up sheet goes out at 7:00pm and fill up with minutes! If you want a spot, we recommend you get there as close to 7:00pm as you can.
Open mic guidelines:
Open to all ages.
Open to all genres — poetry, prose, music, rap, more!
No covers — original work only.
You have 4 to 5 minutes — please be considerate of time!
You can only sign up for either the open mic or the poetry slam.
Poetry slam guidelines:
A literary competition in which poets perform their own original work using no props, costumes, or musical accompaniment.
5 random judges from the audience score each poem from 0.0 to 10.0. Then, we drop the lowest and highest scores to get your cumulative total score.
In each round, poets must perform within 3 minutes and 10 seconds. Poets face a time penalty of -0.5 for every 10 seconds over.
In Qualifying Slams, poets compete to make the Providence Slam Team.
Our Qualifying Slams are capped at 8 poets. There are 2 rounds — to compete, you must have at least 2 original poems. There is an elimination between Rounds 1 and 2.
In Round 1, all 8 poets compete. The top 5 scores of Round 1 advance to Round 2.
In Round 2, the 5 remaining poets compete.
By the end, the top 3 scoring poets of the night will advance to Semi-Finals A on December 19th, 2024. (Poets who do not advance can try again at additional qualifying slams.)
At Fall Semi-Finals, the top four scoring poets advance to Grand Slam on April 17th, 2025.
At Grand Slam, the top five scoring poets will comprise the 2025 Providence Slam Team. They will meet, write, pracrtice, and train through the summer to represent our city at the NorthBeast Regional Poetry Slam and Festival in Boston, MA in July 2025.
Details:
Date: Thursday, September 19th, 2024
Location: AS220 Main Stage at 95 Empire St
Time:
7:00pm: Doors open and sign-up sheet posted
8:00pm: Show begins
Cost: $5 to $10 suggested donation — no one turned away for lack of funds