Slam Nahuatl places third at slam nationals

Hal Dockins
Staff Writer

Michael Todd
Assistant Spectrum Editor

Slam Nahuatl at VCU brought their drum with them this past week, and with it brought the heartbeat to the 2013 the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational where they came in third out of 58 teams.

The 13th annual CUPSI was held April 3 to April 6 at Barnard College in Harlem, N.Y. More than 50 teams from all over the Nation competed in the three-day event to determine poetry supremacy. Rob Gibson, who served as team captain, was eager to showcase the talents of the crew.

“I’m most excited about the rest of the team being able to share their stories and the exposure that comes with that,” Gibson said.

Last year, the team placed 10th in their first time participating in the tournament-style event. Though they were leading after the preliminary rounds, they struggled to keep the same momentum heading into the later rounds. It was a strong showing for a first-year team, but Gibson was hungry for more, aiming to do even better this year.

“We’ve learned from our mistakes,” Gibson said. “We’ve used our mistakes as a springboard. We are inspired by our own stuff.”

On March 6, the team placed third as one of four slam teams to make it to the final stage.

“We came in and accomplished what we wanted to accomplish,” said Hamilton Graziano, the team’s coach.

Graziano felt that one of Slam Nahuatl at VCU’s strengths lies in members’ combined abilities of both producing and performing their poetry, a balance that is rare in many poetry teams.

The team’s rapid growth spurt was due in part to their strengths as young poets and as a makeshift family. The team formed early on in December. Time between then and late March was spent not only developing their pieces, both group and solo, but also together outside of a team context, growing closer as peers.

“They’ve been getting together on a daily basis practicing and writing together and really just becoming a family,” Graziano said. “They hang out, even outside of practice; they’re just spending time together every day. They really care about each other and are a group of friends. … The audience has fun watching VCU perform because they’re just having fun on stage.”

According to its mission statement, the original Slam Nahuatl of Richmond “is dedicated towards using the art of spoken word to uplift members of our community.” The team felt that their sense of community was what both inspired and caught the attention of audiences, peers and professionals present at CUPSI.

“Our goal wasn’t to win, but to bring the community together, to show how strong this community actual is,” Gibson said.

The team was approached by various peer poetry groups and even guest professional poets, such as Patricia Smith, an award-winning author and performer who performed at the closing of the invitational.

“There’s something about Richmond and VCU that’s different; a lot of people were noticing that,” Gibson said.

Slam Nahuatl first participated in two preliminary rounds that consisted of four poems each. In order to progress to semifinals, the team succeeded in placing first in the initial preliminary, though they were knocked to second in the following preliminary by last year’s champions at New York University.

Before the competition, Slam Nahuatl labored over a set list of poems which they ended following exactly over the course of the tournament. Overall, the team performed an even balance of solo and group pieces for a total 16 poems. Graziano feels that it was this level of strategizing and their expansive spectrum of poems that allowed them to progress from semifinals to the final stage their second year competing. The team called their set list of poems a “wall of bullets,” after the Kendrick Lamar song.

“The other thing that got us to final stage was having deep pockets, having a large arsenal of poems that we could use,” Graziano said.

With Gibson graduating, current vice president Saidu Tejan and Joshua Braunstein will take charge of the team and aim to gain more acknowledgement and support from VCU and the School of the Arts as whole.

For example, the team may pursue the possibility of a paid coach position, which NYU provides for its slam poetry team.

“This is just the start,” Graziano said, of the competition. “This is just the beginning of what we want to create. This opened so many doors.”

The team may host slams and workshops during the summer months and plans to begin recruiting new members during the fall semester to help build upon their current success. The team also plans on inviting guest poets to come perform and speak at VCU in the future.

“We bring the drum everywhere we go,” Graziano said. “We bring the heartbeat to every competition.”