Audience number one for poetry slam organizer
BY TRISH HOLLENBECK
Northwest Arkansas Times, August 29, 2005
Doug Shields is a physics man.
And a poet.
Seem odd?
Well, as Shields will tell you, it is not. In fact, he says, physics and poetry have a lot in common. “I’ve found that physics and poetry have a lot more in common than people give them credit for,” he said.
“Both fiction and physics involve solving impossible problems.” Fiction puts protagonists in impossible situations and
gets them out of them, he said, while physics seeks to form theories to solve problems and describe how the world works. Similarly, if a poem works on stage, it proves a hypothesis the poet worked out when writing the piece.
Shields’ poems are narrative, so he is familiar with the art of story-telling, and he writes about such subjects as death, sex and family dysfunction. Born in Parsons, Kan., raised in Harrison, and schooled at the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences in Hot Springs, Shields graduated from the University of Houston in Texas with a bachelor of science degree in physics.
The poetry slamming organizer and slammer has lived in Fayetteville for the past three years and enjoys the town. To describe his love of Fayetteville and its cultural blessings, Shields recalled one evening he was walking through an alley and heard piano music drifting from a lit window in which a woman was playing. He knew then, he said, that he had found home.
“I’m surrounded by fun people,” he said. “What more could you ask for?” He was the organizer of the Arkansas vs. The World Poetry Slam Competition — the first of its kind in Fayetteville — this week during the Fayetteville Arts Festival. There were 10 finalists comprising members of the “world” side, which was The Bullhorn Collective, and Arkansas slammers, including Hannah Moore of Russellville, who was the 2005 Ozark Poetry Slam champion.
Arkansas vs. The World winner Mike McGee of San Jose, Calif., will give an encore 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Jammin’ Java. Shields said he was pleased with the event this year and hopes to
do more.
‘Bad’ poetry
When he attended the mathematics and sciences school in Hot Springs, Shields was drawn to poetry slams. A woman from McGee’s Cafe (now called The Poet Loft) came to an English class to encourage students to participate in the slams. Shields took her up on the offer — at first to get out of mandatory study time — and the rest is, well, let’s just say poetry slamming is a big part of his life.
“Since I was very young, I started writing very bad poetry, and I still write bad poetry,” Shields said. “Without bad poetry, life is even worse. Poetry keeps you focused. It keeps you fresh.” It also keeps him involved with what is going on with his life and soul, a sort of gauge and, he said, it is a warm-up to writing good poetry.
The art of slamming
“Some people have a knack for slamming. I really don’t,” Shields said, adding that he is better at hosting the events, which involve poets getting up and reading their compositions aloud. They are judged — by randomly selected members of the audience — for the poetry and the way in which it is read.
Shields said his narrative pieces are too “weird” for some people. He has been particularly inspired, however, by Rives (no last name given), who won seventh place in the 2002 National Poetry Slam in Minneapolis, Minn. “He proved to me you can be weird and still win slams,” Shields said. Rives uses a lot of tricky word plays, something Shields, too, tries to use in his poetry. “He has a style that I like and that I use a lot,” he said.
Shields and his love of slams fits right in with Fayetteville’s cultural heritage. The Ozark Poetry Slam began in 1994 and was one of the first 20 slams in the world. This year is the first Arkansas vs. The World Poetry Slam. Shields was approached by Daniel Hintz, executive director of Downtown Partners, to coordinate the slam. That is because Shields has been the primary organizer of the Ozark Poetry Slam at Jammin’ Java, which has slams every month.
The first poetry slam in the world, as far as people involved in such things know, was held at Green Mill Bar in Chicago during the 1980s, and was started by Marc Smith, a construction worker who wanted to get
the audience more involved at readings. Slams are a bit more competitive than a bunch of poets sitting around sharing their work. They involve non-poets.
The idea is to bring together the two elements of performance and poetry. “In order to win, you must crowd-please,” Shields said. It is more difficult than people might think to entertain an audience, Shields said, especially an American
one in which there are sophisticated entertainment consumers.
“You can’t fool an American audience with performance,” he said.Bad poems with quality performances can win slams, he explained, and good poems with bad performances can lose. “But a great performance and a great poet will beat anyone.”
Wonderful language
Poets involved in slams in this area, Shields said, have a history of being eccentric and narrative, which may reflect the area’s rich heritage of oral traditions. While narrative poems involve a story and do not necessarily rhyme, they do have rhythm. In fact, Shields said, “All language has a rhythm to it.” English, he said, is “such a hodge-podge language,” with its Germanic origins combined with Latin and Greek, as well as French and, in America, the Native American and Spanish tongue. “You’ve got this wonderful language,” he said. His inspiration when using that language, he said, involves stories about people and as he recites one about death, his animation captures a lone listener. Multiply that by about 20 or 50, depending on the size of the slam, and it becomes clear what the payback is for slam poets.
Some people may not like slams because they feel it cheapens the art of poetry, but for Shields, who has heard a lot of great poetry at the events, slams have revitalized poetry, and, to him, it is all about the audience.
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