Come one come all to the punkest poetic hotspot of Worcester County since before the invention of the iPad, and join us for a good ol fashon 1984 poetry slam!…ish.

The Dirty Gerund Poetry Show is not your typical open mic, and not a slam venue. Our variety show of ruckus and verse slinging artists is taking an evening off from our regularly scheduled programing this November to bring Worcester a poetry slam-ish.

Our roadshow of traveling performers are looking for a challenge over the home plate, and so we are putting out an open invite for:

• Six teams of 2-3 poets performing only 2 poems in head to head rounds:
  • Team A vs Team B
  • Team C vs Team D
  • Team E vs Team F
  • Team F vs Team A
  • Team E vs Team D
  • Team B vs Team C

So find a poet buddy and join us! We know Monday can be a tough night for our out of town friends, but guess what…Tuesday the 11th is a federal holiday.

• November 10, 8:30 to 11:30 PM (with an open mic before and after the slam)
• Standard slam rules: 3 minutes for a poem, 30 second grace period, half point penalties after, no props, no costumes, no music, solo or group pieces are welcome, high/low scores from 5 judges dropped for a total out of 30…etc.

Oh. Wait, my bad, actually the judge situation is not going to be standard. This is the ish part of slam-ish.

The five judges will be provided a score sheet, and will not be asked to hold up their score after each poem. Time penalties will be held until the end.

The score sheet will be based off the trend we saw this summer with our iron poet competition…the Gerund community likes words more than numbers. Scrumptious tasty words, if you will.

• If your poem tastes like movie theater popcorn, we’re going to call that a nice 8.5
• Like top shelf tequila? 10.
• Maybe a judge detected stale bread…7

The delicious score words and their corelating numbers will be kept between the show organizers and judges.

There will be no sacrafical poet in the slam, the open mic beforehand will be considered our judges opportunity to get comfortable with what makes a poem a baked potato.

After all of our competing poets perform, score sheets will be collected, the house band will play and some poems may happen while we tally, and then the schmorgashboards of food selections  will be read with the winning team’s announcement.

Bout draw will take place in early November and posted here on the website. Get email alerts by subscribing at dirtygerund.org/subscribe

No fee! Free admission! Cash prize 👀