The Rules

• Poems must be original work of the performing poets

• Props, costumes, animal acts, musical instruments, recorded audio, pyrotechnics, and the like are not allowed.  

• For Indies and Prelims, penalties would range from two points to disqualification of the poem, as decided by the scorekeeper, but you're not going to do those things so just worry about time penalties.

• Team Finals is Different!  - see below-

• ABOUT TIME:  VoxPop Indies and Prelims have no time limit for individual poems.  You want to throw a 6-minute poem in the first round?  Do it!  There is, however a cumulative time limit on all of your poems and no grace period, with harsh deductions taken at the end of the slam, so pay attention to that!

  • Indies on Friday night will be 3 rounds, with a  cumulative time of 9.00 minutes allowed per poet

  • Prelims on Saturday will be 4 rounds, with a cumulative time of 12.00 minutes allowed per team

  • For both Indies and Prelims, there is a one full point (1.0) deduction for every ten second increment past the cumulative time limit, beginning at 9:00.01 and 12:00.01 respectively.

  • Time begins when the poet engages with the audience, at the assessment of the time keeper.  This may include any talking, making noise, or engaging in a physical way.  Exception: Content warnings given prior to a poem will not count against time.  Poets are asked to take a few seconds following a content advisory to both allow audience members to depart and allow timekeepers to reset if they began the timer

• Authorship For Team Prelims

  • Both individual poems and group pieces are allowed.

  • Each poem in a team bout must claim a different primary author.  In the case of group pieces written jointly, teams must choose one of those poets to be named as primary author for that poem, and that poet may not be named as the author of another poem in that prelim bout.

• Scoring for poems in Indies and Prelims: Five judges, as unbiased as we can find, will give each poem a score from 0.0 to 10.0.  The low and high will be dropped, and the three middle scores will be added to form that poet's score.  The team from each Prelim bout with the highest total score, after any time penalty is assessed, will advance to finals.

• Ties will be a one-poem head-to head matchup with order determined by random selection.  There will be a hard three-minute time-limit for this poem, at the end of which, "TIME!" will be shouted and the poem will be cut off.  After both poems are finished, the audience (not just the judges) will help decide, by holding up colored paddles distributed throughout the room to indicate which poem was stronger.  The host will likely seek audience input in the form of cheering and applause prior and during the paddle vote, but counting the paddles will be the deciding factor

• How Head-to-Head Team Finals Works:  the audience is the judge

  • Team finals will consist of (up to) five head-to-head rounds, with the order of poems determined by random chance in the first round and alternating thereafter.  Winners will be the first team to win three rounds

  • Poems used in Prelim bouts may not be repeated

  • As with the tiebreaker, poems will have a hard 3 minute time limit, and any poems not finished at 3:00.00 will be cut off with a shout of "TIME!"

  • Both poems will be performed in each round.  At the end of the round, the host will encourage the audience to make noise for the best poem, and colored paddles spread throughout the audience will be held up to determine majority opinion

  • Individual or Group pieces may be used, with the same primary author rules as prelims for rounds 1-4.  

  • If a fifth round is required to determine a winner, a primary author may be repeated by either team.  This may only be done in the fifth round of finals.

Please note that all details are subject to change, as we haven't done this in a while and don't know what size participation to expect.  We will let registered teams know of time or logistics changes if/when they happen.

We are planning poetry workshops on both Friday evening and Saturday morning, as well as a Nerd Slam on Saturday mid-day.  Stay tuned for specifics...

Send any questions to ==>  VOXPOP at  SLAMFREEORDIE . ORG

Looking forward to a great event!