Student slam poets fostering camaraderie through spoken word

Brian Charlton
Contributing Writer

Five student poets won spots on a traveling slam poetry competition team this past Monday at the final round of the Grand Ram Slam poetry competition at Shafer Street Playhouse.

Slam Nahuatl, a Richmond-based poetry group with a mission to bring “self-actualization” through its use of poetry and spoken word, has held tournament-style events to narrow its pool of hopefuls since early this semester.

The five grand prize winners of the Grand Ram Slam – Rob Gibson, Christine Hadeed, Joshua Braunstein, Saidu Tejan-Thomas, and Amber Johnson – earned a treasured spot on Slam Nahuatl’s traveling team, and will compete with them in national slam poetry competitions.

The newly completed team’s first outing will take place in February, at a regional poetry slam competition at Virginia Tech. If they are successful, Slam Nahuatl will proceed to the national competition in California in April.

Jefferson Harris, a sophomore communication arts major, adopted many roles, including vice president of the student organization Slam Nahuatl and Monday night’s host. Harris said that the series of Ram Slams over the semester have served as a sort of “screening process” in selecting new team members – a way “to see where the poetry skill in Richmond lies.”

Founded in 2007 by Daniel José Custódio and Vlad Rodriguez, Slam Nahuatl is an engrossingly recognized name on the national spoken-word scene. Custódio and Rodriguez created Slam Nahuatl as a public organization focused around building a sense of camaraderie in the Richmond community. It started as a Richmond chapter and gradually spread to the VCU chapter.

To kick off the evening, Harris took the stage enthusiastically enough to raise patrons’ blood flow.

Josh Vliet, a junior English major, recited two original poems for the competition.

“Poetry is obviously a dying art,” Vliet said. “The poetry is generally more so for the written page.”

Vliet said he likens a Poetry Slam as a communal bond one would get from a concert or having a few drinks with comrades. He believes there is a misconception that poetry is not a performing art.

“Why does a person want to go to a house show and see a cool band? Why does a person want to go to a bar and have a beer?” Vliet said. “It’s more a matter of ‘Does a poetry slam make me want to come to it?’”

Slam Nahuatl uses live performances, workshops and community activism to help people progress through the various stages of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This is accomplished through performance storytelling.

“The oral tradition is such a deep tradition … pretty much every culture that exists on this world the oral tradition has always been the center of story-telling and passing stories,” Custodio said.

Slam Nahuatl’s creators believe that each slam reading can act  as an individualized self-expressed therapy session.

“I think when you hit the stage, in a way, you might be sharing things that were very painful,” Custodio said. “But in sharing them and presenting them, you take ownership of them … have power over them now.”

Slam Nahuatl will host an End Hunger Slam on Dec. 14 at the SPARC Theater on North Hamilton Street. Admission is $15. All proceeds go toward feeding seven local Richmond families in need for an entire year.

Photos by Amber-Lynn Taber