Hampshire Slams New Mexico

This piece is dated April 3, 2008

The Hampshire College Poetry Slam team left Tuesday, April 1 for Albuquerque, NM to compete in the Association of College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. While they did not place, they received recognition in the finals.
The Invitational this year consists of 26 college teams from across the country. They are being hosted by the University of New Mexico and the competition lasts for four days.
In the past, there has been a five-college team for this competition, but this is the first year that Hampshire Slam Collective has been strong enough to assemble their own team. The team is made up of four members and one alternate. These include Sean Conlon, Esme Vaandrager, Charley Pope, Andy Locke, and Sophia Holtz as alternate.
A slam team is assembled by a standardized process involving five judges in a number of rounds. The judges rate any given poet's poem in every round from one to ten and those scores are summed up. At the end of each round, the lower-scoring poet's are eliminated. At the end of the finals the four poet's with the highest points for that round get on the team, which ensures that they are consistently good poet's not just the authors of a one-hit wonder. The rules at the competition are quite similar except that points are accumulated by school and not by person.
When asked about the competition, Sean Conlon responded, “We're really stoked. We get to see other students and what they are doing all over the country.” He also stated that Hampshire is sending a team to the National Poetry Slam in Madison, Wis., in August. Hampshire will be the first college in the United States to send a college team to this adult slam competition.
The Hampshire Slam Collective meets on Tuesday nights in the Main Lecture Hall. They have feature poets lined up every week for the rest of the semester. Next week the feature poet is James “J*me” Caroline. Next week will also be host to the Nationals team finals slam. To find out more about the Hampshire Slam Collective and what they are doing on campus, go to www.hampshireslam.com.