When WSU Vancouver senior Joy Spreadborough entered Angst Gallery, her nerves were off the wall. “I have done poetry slams in the past, but more informal and not as a contest,” Spreadborough said. Once announced as the 2018 Salmon Creek Poetry Slam winner, her dreams of being an author got much closer.
According to Nikki Johnson, the Salmon Creek Journal poetry editor, VanCougar copy editor and host for the Rose and Thorn Poetry Slam, a poetry slam is like a “poetic monologue.”
Johnson said, “When you think of standard poetry, there is a structure in which it should be read, but slam doesn’t necessarily have a structure. It is written the way it would be said out loud, like a conversation.”
The event’s theme was “Rose and Thorn.” Johnson explained the theme as “SCJ’s [Salmon Creek Journal’s] umbrella theme is Divergence and a sub-theme of that is rose and thorn. What this means in terms of people is everyone has two sides. The rose embodies what people want you to see but you can’t have the rose without its thorns.”
Adjacent to the neighboring wine bar, the Angst Gallery created an atmosphere that honored creativity and whimsy for the night’s event. Paintings from local artists hung on the walls and poetic energy filled the space during the Oct. 24 slam.
The event was open to more than just WSU Vancouver students, with poems from India read aloud alongside poems from students around the country creating a mix of professional and non professional poets.
“A good example is Joy’s piece.” Johnson said. “She stood on that stage and told a beautiful story like she was speaking to a friend, or a group of friends.”
First place winner Joy Spreadborough, a humanities major with a creative writing focus, received publication in the 2019 Salmon Creek Journal for her poem “Joyful Joy.” She said her winning poem is about her name and her experiences with it.
With regards to her win Spreadborough said “I feel good about winning and reassured about my reading and writing ability.”
With 25 total submissions, Johnson selected 11 poems to be read that evening. Five were read by the authors and six were read interchangeably by Johnson and two fellow editors from the Salmon Creek Journal, including Editor-in-Chief Alex Duffield and Prose Editor Randal Houle.
The third place winner and audience popular vote, Ian Caton, received a 25 dollar gift card to Starbucks for his poem titled “Shipbuilder.” The second place winner, Laura Elman, received a leather bound journal for her poem “Ghostly Reminder.”
I’m going to travel the whole world, learn everything about it, and then write about it.