MLK Slam Poetry Returns To The Live Mic

On Monday afternoon, halfway through the Z Experience Poetry Slam, host Ngoma Hill remarked that this year — the event’s 27th — saw the event’s biggest turnout yet. It was a fitting return to in-person form for the slam, in honor of community organizer Zannette Lewis, as poets filled the O.C. Marsh Lecture Hall in the Yale Science Building and, for a few hours, turned it into one of the hottest slams on the East Coast.

The event — supported by the Yale Peabody Museum, which is midway through renovation of its own space — featured performances by Abioseh Joseph Cole, Ameerah Shabazz-Bilal, Goddess Tymani Rain, Hattress Barbour, Lyrical Faith, Ray Jane, Tchalla Williams, Slangston Hughes, William Washington, and Yexandra Diaz. 

After an open mic hosted by poet Croilot Semexan, as well as a group performance by veteran poets Cole, Sharmont Influence Little, and Michael Peterson, Ngoma explained the rules for the slam. Each poet would get the same time limit to perform, with points deducted for exceeding that limit. Their work would be scored by five judges on a scale of 1 to 10; their score for each poem would be calculated by throwing out the lowest and highest scores and adding up the other three. There were also cash prizes: $1,000 for first place, $500 for second place, and $250 for third place. 

All of that, and the fact that the room was full of people eager to hear what the poets had to bring, made for an afternoon where antes were upped, games raised, and, in time, souls bared.

Abioseh Joseph Cole’s opening move was a rumination on Blackness that dug into the history of his race consciousness and the way it gave him strength to face present-day racism. ​“Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” he said, ​“because guess what: you are, too.” His poem drew a score of 26.8, even after including a penalty for running over time. The other poets would have to bring their best, and they did.

William Washington used a repeating phrase of ​“drip, drip” from his faucet to mix blood and tears together. ​“We are being murdered one by one, and as that one drop drips into the sink, I wonder if that one is safe to drink,” he said. 

Hattress Barbour offered praise: ​“The women in my family are magic. I have seen them transform tragedy into triumph,” he said. ​“They withdrew pain from wounds I didn’t know I had.… That monument they’ve been waiting for has always been right here,” he concluded, pointing to his heart. His penalty for running over did not go over well with the crowd. 

Ameerah Shabazz-Bilal talked about the work of developing a higher consciousness. ​“Can we just be Black and free?” She also ran over the clock, and it cost her.

Then came Goddess Tymani Rain, who kicked things up a notch. In a riff on how Black women become Olympians, she wove in the larger struggles they always face; the trials of being an athlete resonate with the trials of trying to survive. Her poem reached a fever pitch, carrying the audience with her. ​“No matter how they medal your decisions, they will never take away your gold,” she shouted. She brought the house down.

“I get the feeling y’all liked that one,” Ngoma said. So did the judges. With a score of 29.5, Rain was suddenly in the lead.

Yexandra Diaz also went over time but still scored high on the strength of her piece, offering understanding about the violence done to Black men. ​“They ain’t tell you how dangerous it is for Black men to think,” she said. ​“Are you willing to shoot off your nose to spite your own race?” 

Slangston Hughes started a poem about traveling to the future that seemed at first like it would be a poem about happiness, but then got dark. He talked about ​“the thin line between ​‘hands up, don’t shoot’ and ​‘praise God, I’m coming home.”

“This is supposed to be my Black joy poem,” he said, ​“and it is … why do you think our humor is so dark?” His poem earned him a spot in the running right behind Rain.

Tchalla Williams delivered a poem on why she writes, as a form of civil disobedience and inspiring action in others. ​“I need you to go forth and do,” she said, ​“but not as you’re told.… Ain’t no way you’re going to quit. I write these words so you remember that shit. You started so you might as well finish it.” She now had the third highest score, fighting off Ray Jane, coming in with a poem about self-assertion (“what I’ve always been is the one”).

The last poet in the first round, however, brought the house down again. Lyrical Faith rocked the mic with a searing poem about abortion. She reached back in time to explain that women in slavery ​“killed babies as a form of resistance”; better that than let them live as slaves. She went on that ​“the Black fetus is the White man’s bullseye … C‑section only exists because Black women were experiments,” and noted that White women who were outraged at the overturning of Roe v. Wade were in some sense only now entering the kind of discrimination Black women have always faced. ​“Welcome,” she concluded. ​“We’ve been expecting you.”

On the strength of the first round’s scores, seven of the poets advanced to the second round. Goddess Tymani Rain set the bar high with a poem about hiding anger and bitterness behind constant smiling. Lyrical Faith tore into plantation weddings, with couples ​“exchanging vows where bodies would swing.… When did it become popular? When did it ever go out of style?… Some White women have dreamed of this day their whole lives,” she said. ​“What’s more American than marriage, God, and slavery?” Meanwhile, for Black people, ​“we’ll have memories to last a lifetime.” Slangston Hughes felt that if we were indulging in cancel culture, we should just cancel America, with its halfway measures and weak concessions. ​“We asked for change and they put Maya Angelou on a quarter. That’s not what we meant,” he said. 

Tchalla Williams’s poem was about the power of poetry itself. Ray Jane delivered a eulogy for slaves: ​“You are more than a blip on a graph.… Your life was lost like loose cigarettes.… A dead Black man, an unmarked grave, become like jazz on my page.” Yexandra Diaz delivered an ode of pain and resistance to her daughter. ​“I should have named you Amber, just in case,” she began. William Washington excoriated the n‑word.

The scores from the judges were so tight that six poets advanced to the final round. Lyrical Faith and Ray Jane dug deep into the silence of Black women in the face of violence (“we all contribute to the carnage,” Jane said). Yexandra Diaz’s poem seemed to envelope all of her life experience. Tchalla railed against technology worship. Goddess Tymani Rain ripped into the precarious life of being an entertainer (“the only difference between a suicide and martyrdom is press coverage”). Slangston Hughes wrestled with history, in the afternoon’s most excoriating poem yet.

The margins between the scores were now so razor-thin that even this supposedly final round precipitated a runoff between Lyrical Faith and Goddess Tymani Rain. Rain got deeply personal, while Faith gave lessons learned during protests that offered humor and pain in equal measure. It was enough for Rain to take third, Faith to grab second, and Slangston Hughes to come out on top in first. The big applause that greeted them at the end was for the huge talent they’d brought to the microphone, but also for the return of the event itself. Z Experience helped everyone remember the crackling energy of sending out words like arrows into a room full of people.