Romance move over: Delhiites prefer 'Slam Poetry'

'If Malala had been/ One of the hundreds of Pakistanis, Afghanis, Iraqis missing school because of a drone strike/Liars, they lie,/But we know that we'd never know/ That she ever walked this earth.'

In January last year, through incisive, taunting words strung together in a powerful performance, Ekta Sharma's 'Real Peace Prize' raised questions about the validity of the Nobel Peace prize, questioning whether it should be awarded to citizens of war-torn nations.

Around the same time, came Rene Varma's 'Open Letter to Honey Singh' –an angry response to how rap music defines women in narrow and derogatory ways. Receiving incredible appreciation and lakhs of hits on YouTube where they were uploaded, these two powerful performances marked the arrival of spoken word poetry or 'Slam Poetry' as it is better known, in the Capital's mainstream cultural scene.

Saumya Chaudhry, founder of Poet's Collective, a community of performance poets, spoke about what Slam Poetry and 'Slam Culture' was all about. Chaudhry says, "Slam Culture is an essentially American concept, that arrived in India about three years ago, but really got big in 2014. It started off as poetry based meet-ups, where people would meet and share more conventional poems, but it soon changed into the form it is today when a lot of personal, repressed sentiments started coming out. Instead of rhymes and romance, we saw people using it to talk about social issues, gender and identity."

The performances involve young poets, reading out their pieces for two to five minutes, amidst a group of spectators. The poems talk about causes and issues that matter to them. In the end, the audience judges the winner.

Becoming wildly popular amongst teenagers and young adults, the Capital now sees anywhere between two to 10 spoken word events every weekend.

"It's easy to understand why Slam Poetry is such a rage. In a society like ours, it gives youngsters a voice, a platform to vent its repressed feelings and issues that were once considered taboo. It also has a popularity quotient which surely gives it a great fillip," Chaudhry adds.

The popularity of this art form has ensured that even public institutions have opened their gates to these events, with various colleges in Delhi University also hosting slam events now.

The city's spoken word scene probably had its best moment this September when a team of three students Diksha Bijlani, Cheryl Mukherji and Shubhra Awasthy, from Delhi University won the 1st National Youth Poetry Slam held in Bengaluru.

Starting off as an audience member who thought spoken word poetry was all about rhymes and romance, Bijlani, now writes on social and personal issues. She has even started her own initiative, called Slip of Tongue, with some friends and fellow poets.

Bijlani says, "The poetry scene in the Capital has definitely exploded, and there is some great experimental stuff happening in the circuit right now. At Slip of Tongue, we are now experimenting with poetry and music."

Then there are groups like Performance Consortium, that want to tie up with municipal schools in Delhi to introduce children to spoken word poetry and train some of them into becoming professional poets.

While Slam Poetry is an encouraging trend, it has its critics. Tauseef Ahmed, Vice President of the Youth for Heritage Foundation and a poet himself, says the phenomenon needs to grow beyond the city.

"The movement though seems to be only limited to the metro and has largely been in English. It doesn't have much scope for people doing Hindi or Urdu poetry, because the whole concept is so Western. That is why it has become a solely urban trend."