Podslam.org

Podslam.org is an impressive new project highlighting slam poetry. The current theme is black history month.

Welcome to podslam.org's first feature, presented by Just Media and Cafe Nuba. We have 15 of Denver's best spoken word artists. They were asked to spit something relevant to black history month, but you can be the judge of that.

Each artist's poem can be accessed in a number of ways, including audio and video. The videos are nicely produced green screens, so for each performance the artist appears in front of a dynamic background, which changes to support what is being said.

Local schools have been getting more involved in holding poetry slams. There were three last year and one this year so far. Students from our school have participated in all of them, and we are considering ways to work even more slam poetry into the creative writing units. The podslam poets I have already watched can serve as great models of the performance aspects of slam poetry. Pacing and body language are difficult to teach, and seeing the high quality performances of these poets will go a long way toward helping students improve their own craft.