VCU slam poets triumphant at Virginia Tech competition, move on to nationals

Slam Nahuatl’s traveling competition team. Clockwise from upper left: Rob “Robalooyuh” Gibson, Saidu “Saheed” Tejan-Thomas, Josh “Mr. C” Braunstein, Kristine “Mangosteen” Hadeed, and Faisal “Firefai” Ilyas.

Nick Bonadies
Spectrum Editor

Slam Nahuatl’s traveling competition team. Clockwise from upper left: Rob “Robalooyuh” Gibson, Saidu “Saheed” Tejan-Thomas, Josh “Mr. C” Braunstein, Kristine “Mangosteen” Hadeed, and Faisal “Firefai” Ilyas.

Slam Nahuatl, Richmond’s own slam-poetry collective, emerged victorious at this past weekend’s Association of College Unions International competition at Virginia Tech, winning first prize against collegiate teams from across the east coast.

Photos by Mel Kobran

In succeeding against university slam poetry teams from Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina, Slam Nahuatl secured their spot in the national competition – the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) – in La Verne, Calif. this April.

“They brought a lot of competition,” said Faisal Ilyas, junior information sciences major and poet with Slam Nahuatl. “But they showed us mad love, and in return we showed them mad love.”

“It was mutual love,” he added.

Kristine Hadeed, senior mass communications major and fellow poet, said that Slam Nahuatl formed fast bonds with the teams they beat out for top prize.

“Even though it was a competition, and there’s a certain sense of skepticism and rivalry that goes with that, there was also a sense of community and respect for each others’ craft,” she said. “I think they appreciated the diversity of our group, too. … (The other teams commented on) how sometimes it’s easy to fall in ruts when you’re around all the same kind of lifestyles.”

“Some of them had accents on them, a little twang in the words,” said Rob Gibson, the senior communication arts major who won a second place individual prize in addition to the team’s collective first place. “It embodied where they were from, using the words that they did.”

The team was made up entirely of the winners of Slam Nahuatl’s Ram Slam nights – smaller slam competitions held over the past several months at Shafer Street Playhouse. Competitors at each Ram Slam entered for the chance to join Slam Nahuatl’s traveling competition team.

Two of the team members, freshmen Saidu Tejan-Thomas (undeclared) and Josh Braunstein (English), competed as first-time Slam Nahuatl members last weekend after earning their spots last semester. Both learned about the group through Gibson, who was a resident adviser on Tejan-Thomas’ floor.

Braunstein said that even as a new member, his experience with Slam Nahuatl was “judgemental-free”: “At the end of the day, we just like poetry. I want to hear other people do poetry and hear people from other parts of the country do poetry.”

“People who write poetry, but … think that it’s not good enough to share … (should know that) we don’t judge,” he said.

The Slam Nahuatl competition team will travel to La Verne, Calif. on April 18 to compete against college slam poets from across the country. Until then, they will continue to work with coaches Gaiya Giuseppe, Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates of Theatre VCU and Hamilton Graziano, Slam Nahuatl’s official Slam Master.

 

Slam Nahuatl, which takes its name in part from the Aztec word for “good clear sound,” celebrates the art of spoken word with monthly competitions like Ram Slam, while also holding fundraising events like their End Hunger Slam. For more information and ways to get involved, visit www.goodclearsound.org.

 

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