District Poetry Slam Preview

Four East students will be performing at the district poetry slam on Sunday, May 6, at Shawnee Mission South. The qualifiers — Seniors Adam Cameron and John Gorman, Sophomore Lotus West and Junior Aakriti Chaturvedi — were the top four finalists at East’s poetry slam on April 24.

Going into district, the finalists’ nerves are kicking in.

“I’m more nervous because there are people I don’t know and there are judges that I’m not sure will like the content of my poem,” Chaturvedi said.

To prepare herself, Chaturvedi has been practicing in front of people to work on the delivery of the poem because that is one of the most important aspects judges look for in poetry slams.

“I think a lot of the times slam comes down to the performance more so than the writing because the writing tends to be more consistently strong, but not everyone has experience with performing poetry,” Judge Amy Andersen said.

A panel of four judges, all from different schools, will be judging the district slam with a 1-10 scoring system. The contestants will mostly be getting scores between eight and 10, getting down to tenths.

Of the four scores from the judges, they will drop the highest and lowest score and total the middle two to determine the winner.

In addition to individual winners, there will also be a school winner with the highest team score, which puts more pressure on the performers to do their best.

“I’m just trying to do better than I did last time,” Chaturvedi said.