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After years of hopping all-ages venues, Portland Poetry Slam has a new home.
Last Sunday, PPS Slam Master Leyna Rynearson announced that the group will take up residency at Portland Center Stage starting Sept. 27, thanks to a Wallace Foundation Grant awarded this April that gave PCS $770,000 for programming to build its audiences.
To understand Portland Poetry Slam, follow the trail of venues that closed or got pushed past capacity. First, there was Backspace, Old Town's all-ages cafe-gameroom-gallery-music venue. Then Slabtown shut down, Glyph Cafe & Arts Space overflowed and the fire marshall deemed Kickstand in the basement of Velo Cult unsafe. After one-night stands at Hotlips Pizza and Alberta Rose Theatre, the poets have been slamming at the Cotton Cloud furniture store near Lloyd Center since spring.
"We've been surfing this wave of all-ages venues that keep shutting down," said Rynearson.
When the fire marshall shut Kickstand down, a poetry fan volunteered his six-person house to host the March 15 slam. Fifty people showed up, then 70, then 100. "We had to go into the yard," said Rynearson. "It started thundering and raining and no one was leaving. I knew I had to find a place for those poets."
Even in a city where nearly every bar has a stage or hosts open mic nights, Rynearson found her selection limited. "I would rather shut down the show rather than go to a 21-and-over venue," she said. "It ruins the culture." For Rynearson, who started performing at 17 herself, limiting the age of poets sacrifices quality since top performer often start at age 16 or 17, like mainstays Alex Dang and Erin Schick.
So PCS's patronage is just the thing. It might sound like a charity case, but the slammers are actually at the top of their game.
According to Rynearson, the Germans wouldn't have this problem. "When one of our top performers came back from Germany, he told me we've been chumped over here," Rynearson said. "Poetry slam in Europe is a real fucking thing."
Rynearson and the PPS slammers are taking this as their chance to rise up.
"Poetry slam is to a poetry reading as a house show is to a concerto performance," Rynearson said. "This is poetry's form of an underground revolution."
GO: Poetry Slam's finals are at the Literary Arts Center, 925 SW Washington St., 6:30 pm Sunday, Sept. 6. $5 donation.
WWeek 2015