Gunn’s slam poetry event April 6 marveled audience members as an assortment of verses with topics ranging from dentists, airports, college, television to love filled the Little Theater.

The event was organized by the Gunn Slam Poetry Club (GSP) and featured guest performances by Lee Knight Jr. from the Palo Alto Slam Team and Tim Bevins and Travis Reid from Fremont High School.

Slam poetry is the art of performed poetry in a competitive event. At such events, poets each perform a poem called a slam, which is then judged on a scale from one to 10 by five randomly selected audience members based on the content of the slam and the way it is delivered to the audience. Poets cannot use props, music or go over the three-minute time limit. Of the five scores, the lowest and highest are dropped, and the poets with the best scores perform a second slam. The three finalists with the best total scores are then given prizes for their pieces.

Slam poetry lets poets be creative in their writing and performances, allowing them to present a variety of styles and topics to their audience. “Slams provide many different voices and perspectives, and through these voices come stories, heartbreak, laughter and really beautiful poetry,” junior GSP member Sara Rose Tannenbaum said.

One of GSP club advisor Jessie Hawkins’ favorite parts of slam is that it attracts a terrific variety of people to both perform and watch. “I like the ancient literary tradition adapted to a modern sensibility, the fundamentally nonsensical idea that poetry can be judged with numbers and that the judges can be anyone from a fellow poet to a mechanic whose preferred literature is typically about Chevy transmission systems,” Hawkins said.

Throughout the event, poets interacted with the audience by sharing with them the joys and frustrations they felt expressed in their slams. “There’s a special dimension you add when you perform poetry,” junior GSP member Elijah Guo said. “I take pleasure in watching the audience actually being able to experience the poetry in a whole new light.”

GSP founder and president senior Ian Barnett agrees that having an audience is one of the best parts. “The reward is seeing people’s reactions,” he said. “That’s enough to keep me coming back [to perform].”

The event raised enough money to pay back all the club’s expenses and hopes to have another event soon. “The event went really well,” Hawkins said. “The audience always reminds me how good these poets are, how far they’ve come and how much promise they hold.”