Evening of the bards

Ishara JAYAWARDANE

The American Center Colombo hosted the ‘Open Mic Competitive Poetry Slam – Season V’ on May 24, providing an opportunity for people to showcase their talent and express themselves freely through poetry.

Fifteen poets, many of them university and school students, presented their poems with their own style to an appreciative audience. PAO Christopher Teal welcomed the audience and praised the successful continuation of the program. Outreach Officer Hector Gonzalez facilitated the program.

Outreach Officer of the U.S. Embassy Hector Gonzalez presenting the winning certificate and prize Evelyn de Zoysa

Winner of the ‘Audience Choice’ award Bavatharani Maheswaran receiving her certificate and prize from Outreach Officer of the U.S. Embassy Hector Gonzalez

The format of the Poetry Slam was explained by Gonzalez to the poets and the audience. Five judges were randomly selected from the audience and were asked to give scores to each poet based on their performance.

Audience chooses

At the end of the event, Evelyn De Zoysa won the “Best Performance” and was awarded a certificate and the winning prize. Bavatharani Maheswaran won the prize of “Audience Choice” and was awarded a certificate and a prize as well. All the performers were given an American publication and a free lifetime membership to the American Center Library in Colombo and to American Corners in Kandy and Jaffna.

Outreach Officer Hector Gonzalez awarded the certificate of ‘Audience Choice’ to the poet selected by the audiences and awarded the certificate of ‘Best Performance’ to the poet selected by the Judges. Five judges are selected from the audience and the poets are rated on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. The emcee writes the score on the scoreboard; the highest and lowest scores are eliminated and the remaining three are added up. A perfect score, then, is 30. Evelyn de Zoysa was the winner under this category (Best Performance)

Performing favourite

After the winner for the Best Performance was presented, the audience chooses another poet to win the Audience Choice Award.

This can be won by anybody except the poet who won the award for the Best Performance. The poets’ names are read in order of recitation and the audience cheers for their favorite. The poet who receive the biggest cheering wins. The audience may clap, stomp, cheer, whistle etc. The winner under this category was Bavatharani Maheswaran.

The marking is at the judge’s discretion, they are not governed by criteria as this is an open mic Poetry Slam – similar to what is conducted in the U.S. If a judge wants to score a poem based on creativity, they are free to do so.

However, it is important that the poems be authentic/original. (Marking schemes explained in the previous response)

Audience consisted of 30 members. And the competition is open to poets from all areas of the country. “In fact, when we launched Poetry Slam in October 2011, poets from the North and the East participated in the competition.

We have successfully managed to maintain that momentum and encourage more poets from the rural areas to participate in Poetry Slam,” said an Embassy spokesperson.

The American Center plans to continue to serve as a platform for talented Sri Lankans to express themselves freely and creatively by hosting an ongoing series of poetry slam competition to be held in the coming months. Youth are encouraged to participate in these events. A video clip of the poetry slam event will be posted on the US Embassy’s Facebook page soon.