Send Union Square Slam to NPS
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Union Square Slam is sending our very first team to the National Poetry Slam in Decatur, GA this August, and we need YOUR help to get there!
Nkosi Nkululeko, Taylor Steele, Kearah Armonie, and Patrick Roche are some of the sharpest writers coming out of the greater New York City area. They will be competing among 72 teams for a spot on Finals stage, but more importantly, they will be sharing their incredibly relevant and necessary work with poets, fans, and audience members from across the country.
Meet the Team:
Nkosi Nkululeko is the 2016 NYC Youth Poet Laureate, and a Callaloo Fellow. He has been nominated for the Independent Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize. He was a member of the 2015 Urbana Slam Team and currently on the 2016 Union Square Slam Team. Nkosi”s work is published in VINYLpoetryandprose, No Token, decomP, and elsewhere. He lives in Harlem, New York. (See Nkosi here)
Taylor Steele is a Bronx-born, Brooklyn-based writer and performer. Her work can be found at such esteemed publications as Apogee Journal, HEArt Journal, Rogue Agent, Blackberry Magazine, The Body is Not an Apology, and many forthcoming. Her chapbook Dirty.Mouth.Kiss will be available Fall 2016 on Pizza Pi Press. She is a triple-Taurus who believes in the power of art to change, shape, and heal. (See Taylor here)
Kearah-Armonie (Kearmonie) is a Brooklyn based poet, spoken word artist, MC, Filmmaker, Blogger, and Writer. She currently finishing up her B.A. in Documentary Film Production at Brooklyn College. Having been performing spoken word since 2011, she is now a mentor and teaching artist. (See Kearah here)
Patrick Roche is a New Jersey-based writer and performer who graduated from Princeton University. He has competed or featured at multiple national competitions, events, and universities around the country. His work has been featured on Button Poetry, SlamFind, UpWorthy, The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and others, accumulating over 6 million views. (See Patrick here)
Who are we?
Founded in 2015, Union Square Slam is a literary arts organization providing a space for poets to share their voices, develop their craft, and build a community celebrating poetry in all of its expressions. Based in New York City, U.S.S. produces a weekly reading series featuring contemporary poets with a focus on working artists and authors in the spoken word and slam tradition. Our features (and audience) are primarily queer-identified and/or people of color and/or identify as disabled or alter-abled. Union Square Slam hosts either a weekly open mic or PSi-certified poetry slam, and writing workshops before the show, encouraging poets to explore creatively.
What is a Poetry Slam?*
Poetry slam is conventionally defined as the art of competitive performance poetry. Invented in the 1980s by a Chicago construction worker named Marc Smith (So what?), slam is a fast-paced competition where poets have a limited amount of time to impress judges randomly selected from the audience. Performers use all the tricks of storytelling, songwriting, theatre, stand-up comedy, and cold hard poetry to wheedle points out of the judges from 0.0 (terrible) to 10.0 (perfect!).
Slam is not a passive performance: in addition to the judges, other audience members are strongly encouraged to participate by cheering, whistling, or mildly heckling the hosts or judges.
What is NPS?*
The National Poetry Slam is the annual poetry slam championship tournament, wherein four-to five-person teams from all over North America and Europe gather to compete against each other for the national team title. The week-long festival is part championship tournament, part poetry summer camp, and part traveling exhibition. Staged in a different city each year, the National Poetry Slam has emerged as slam's highest-profile showcase.
The show itself is a collaboration between Poetry Slam, Inc., and the host city; non-profit PSi oversees registered teams and tournament direction, while the host city provides performance venues, competition staff, and one super-lucky audience drawn from the poetry lovers of the city. Both a national undertaking and a local movement, NPS 2016 will mark the FIRST TIME the tournament will be held in the the City of Decatur Georgia, and it's shaping up to be the greatest National Poetry Slam yet.
*thank you to this year's organizers in Decatur for these great descriptions!! For more information on attending the National Poetry Slam, please visit http://npsdecatur.com/
Nkosi Nkululeko, Taylor Steele, Kearah Armonie, and Patrick Roche are some of the sharpest writers coming out of the greater New York City area. They will be competing among 72 teams for a spot on Finals stage, but more importantly, they will be sharing their incredibly relevant and necessary work with poets, fans, and audience members from across the country.
Meet the Team:
Nkosi Nkululeko is the 2016 NYC Youth Poet Laureate, and a Callaloo Fellow. He has been nominated for the Independent Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize. He was a member of the 2015 Urbana Slam Team and currently on the 2016 Union Square Slam Team. Nkosi”s work is published in VINYLpoetryandprose, No Token, decomP, and elsewhere. He lives in Harlem, New York. (See Nkosi here)
Taylor Steele is a Bronx-born, Brooklyn-based writer and performer. Her work can be found at such esteemed publications as Apogee Journal, HEArt Journal, Rogue Agent, Blackberry Magazine, The Body is Not an Apology, and many forthcoming. Her chapbook Dirty.Mouth.Kiss will be available Fall 2016 on Pizza Pi Press. She is a triple-Taurus who believes in the power of art to change, shape, and heal. (See Taylor here)
Kearah-Armonie (Kearmonie) is a Brooklyn based poet, spoken word artist, MC, Filmmaker, Blogger, and Writer. She currently finishing up her B.A. in Documentary Film Production at Brooklyn College. Having been performing spoken word since 2011, she is now a mentor and teaching artist. (See Kearah here)
Patrick Roche is a New Jersey-based writer and performer who graduated from Princeton University. He has competed or featured at multiple national competitions, events, and universities around the country. His work has been featured on Button Poetry, SlamFind, UpWorthy, The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and others, accumulating over 6 million views. (See Patrick here)
Who are we?
Founded in 2015, Union Square Slam is a literary arts organization providing a space for poets to share their voices, develop their craft, and build a community celebrating poetry in all of its expressions. Based in New York City, U.S.S. produces a weekly reading series featuring contemporary poets with a focus on working artists and authors in the spoken word and slam tradition. Our features (and audience) are primarily queer-identified and/or people of color and/or identify as disabled or alter-abled. Union Square Slam hosts either a weekly open mic or PSi-certified poetry slam, and writing workshops before the show, encouraging poets to explore creatively.
What is a Poetry Slam?*
Poetry slam is conventionally defined as the art of competitive performance poetry. Invented in the 1980s by a Chicago construction worker named Marc Smith (So what?), slam is a fast-paced competition where poets have a limited amount of time to impress judges randomly selected from the audience. Performers use all the tricks of storytelling, songwriting, theatre, stand-up comedy, and cold hard poetry to wheedle points out of the judges from 0.0 (terrible) to 10.0 (perfect!).
Slam is not a passive performance: in addition to the judges, other audience members are strongly encouraged to participate by cheering, whistling, or mildly heckling the hosts or judges.
What is NPS?*
The National Poetry Slam is the annual poetry slam championship tournament, wherein four-to five-person teams from all over North America and Europe gather to compete against each other for the national team title. The week-long festival is part championship tournament, part poetry summer camp, and part traveling exhibition. Staged in a different city each year, the National Poetry Slam has emerged as slam's highest-profile showcase.
The show itself is a collaboration between Poetry Slam, Inc., and the host city; non-profit PSi oversees registered teams and tournament direction, while the host city provides performance venues, competition staff, and one super-lucky audience drawn from the poetry lovers of the city. Both a national undertaking and a local movement, NPS 2016 will mark the FIRST TIME the tournament will be held in the the City of Decatur Georgia, and it's shaping up to be the greatest National Poetry Slam yet.
*thank you to this year's organizers in Decatur for these great descriptions!! For more information on attending the National Poetry Slam, please visit http://npsdecatur.com/
Organizer
Cecily Schuler
Organizer
New York, NY