The Kingston Summer Slam dares poets to conquer their fears.

On June 29, the second Kingston Summer Slam was held at The Mansion. Like its counterpart at Queen’s, the event invites poets to read their poetry on stage to be judged by the audience on a scale of one to ten. 

Queen’s Poetry Slam has been on hiatus since most of the executive team left for the summer. Andréa Prins, who has been involved with the Queen’s Poetry Slam since it began in 2013, started the Kingston Summer Slam to keep poetry slams going throughout the summer.

On the hot summer evening, a crowd of students and community members gathered on the second floor of The Mansion. The dimly lit venue set the audience close to the stage.

The Kingston Summer Slam operates in the same way at the Queen’s Poetry Slam — the first half of the evening was an open mic event, which was followed by the judged slam. 

Prins believes that the summer slam gives everyday people within a community the chance to connect with one another.

“Slams are about celebrating every day heroes because our lives are such epic momentous journeys,” Prins said. “Those are the stories that you can relate to because they are people living in the same city as you, living the same kind of experience as you.”

Before the reading began, Prins welcomed the crowd to the event. In her opening address, she explained that the Kingston Summer Slam provides a safe space for people to share their stories. 

Love, art, forgiveness, change, telemarketing and poor student housing were among the topics that the poets spoke about at the slam. But it was the enthusiasm of the poets, rather than the topics, that was most memorable that night.

The poets were very animated about the emotions that influenced their poems as they read their work in a spoken word style, with powerful notes of anger, sadness, or joy in their voices. 

“It really brings the words to life when they’re delivered in such an emotionally charged, passionate way,” Prins said.

With most Queen’s students gone for the summer, Prins said she wasn’t sure how many people would attend the summer slam.

“It’s definitely been a different crowd because a lot of the core audience went home for the summer,” Prins said. “It has been daunting and exciting at the same time.” 

However, the summer slam still brought in the familiar faces of Kingston community members, like Anne Graham, Mike Williams and Bob Mackenzie, who have attended every slam.

Anne Graham reading her poetry as part of the slam. (Photo by Jessica Conners)

While the Queen’s Poetry Slam invites all members of the Queen’s and Kingston communities to attend, the summer slam is more of a Kingston-based event. Prins said this brought newcomers to the stage.

Prins said Jessica Holmes, one of the newcomers, was inspired by the honorary poet from last month’s slam, Bruce Kauffman, and his poem titled Gifts.

Prins said this cyclical inspiration — where one poet inspires another, who inspires yet more poets  — helps create a successful poetry slam.

“All it takes is for someone to make that first step and it starts a wave of confessions,” Prins said. “People feel like they are okay to be in a space where they can talk about what’s on their mind, or what’s in their heart.”

Gifts focuses on the dormant potential for creation that Kauffman says so often goes unexpressed.

Kauffman’s poem starts with the line: “You, each of you, has talents, gifts, within you.”

His poem continues: “These, those, talents who you hide,/ believing perhaps, they are not worthy,/not good enough…/but they roll inside you and you can feel them in your chest,/they are not calling to you but instead, calling out.”

Holmes said Kauffman’s poem is the reason she felt inspired to finally read her work on stage.

“This first encounter with spoken-word performances was all thanks to the wonderful Bruce Kauffman,” said Holmes.  “[He] is one hundred percent responsible for the drive, the inertia, and the seed planted in my mind that got me into presenting my writing.”

This article has been updated to reflect the following clarification: The Kingston Poetry Slam is a separate initiative from the Queen’s Poetry Slam, and not a continuation of the Queen’s event. Unclear information appeared in the July 28th issue of the Journal.