Slam poetry is one of the most exciting forms of artisitc expression. It combines theater and writing in energized and personal performances that often leave the audience breathless. This week, JustArts spoke with Usman Hameedi '12, a founding member and the current president of Brandeis' Slam Poetry Team. Hameedi is also a competitor in this week's competition, the fourth-annual event that determines which five members of the club will compete at the next level, the College Nationals, in April.

JustArts: What was your role in founding the Slam Poetry club?

Usman Hameedi: The overarching club is VOCAL, and one subset of VOCAL is the slam team. It's not a slam poetry club. Jason [Simon Henry Birenbaum '11] and Jamele [Adams, the Assistant Dean of Student Life] were a big part of it. Jason was very interested in creating a slam team here and talked to Jamele about it. Jason did a lot of youth poetry stuff in his time, so once I got here and some other first-years, we made a team together. We all competed and created a slam to be on the team.

JA: How was this event organized?

UH: It stems from the original way we had it, but now since I've taken charge of the club—what happens is during the fall, there are about six to seven open mics, and poets—any Brandeis student, grad students included—can come perform. They can either perform in the slam and compete or they can just do the open mics, and they accumulate a certain amount of points towards finals.

If you win a slam, you automatically move on to finals. But if you're not ready to compete, you can accumulate a bunch of points by coming to the mic and just sharing your work. And then you're invited to come to a final slam.

JA: How will the winners be selected?

UH: Its going to be a traditional slam. There will be five judges ... selected from the audiences—randomly selected, and they also can't know the other performers, so it's very objective. Each poem is scored from one to 10 with one decimal point. The lowest and the highest are dropped. The top five poets are those who have the highest cumulative scores of the night. There's an elimination between rounds.

JA: How did you get interested in poetry? When did you begin writing your own poetry?

UH: I've been writing for about 11 years. I've been performing for about five. I've always just been interested in it. It's just fun. You can be a whole other person. There are so many personas you can take on. It's just a great way to express yourself.

JA: How do you prepare for a competition like this?

UH: Without giving too much away [about] my secrets, I just go through all my poems and figure out different strategies and make sure my mind and body are ready for this.

JA: What would you like the audience to get out of this experience?

UH: Just to know the voices that are coming out of Brandeis and to understand that with this whole project we're putting Brandeis on the map. Although it seems like this is just for VOCAL, this is a potential opening for every club on campus because we're putting Brandeis' name out there.

We've already done that significantly because this is our fourth year going. People know us. We have strategies against our team—like other teams know how to compete against us. And this is great. Let's say, hypothetically, the Russian Club needed a poet to come for an event. They would be in a network, and they would be able to access that network because we laid down the groundwork for that.

JA: What is the next step for the winners of the competition?

UH: After the top five are picked, I'm the coach and the captain, so we're going to start training. Basically, I have certain goals in mind for the team, and we're going to move toward meeting them. Specifically for the remainder of the semester, we're just going to have a meet and greet, fill out some questionnaires here and there, and people are expected to work on individual pieces during the winter break. Immediately when we come back in the spring, we're going to start working on group pieces.