It probably has something to do with the BC High School Slam Championship that runs April 10–14, 2012. At Hullabaloo, teams of students show off their lyrical skills in a competition to determine which high school has the best poets in the province.
All poetic styles and voices are welcome! You could perform a sonnet, a rap, a rant, a monologue – you can even do a group piece with multiple poets onstage at once. The regular poetry slam rules apply, that means, no music, no props, no costumes, just you and a microphone for up to three minutes. Then five randomly-selected judges will hold up scores from zero to ten. The high and low scores are dropped and your poem receives a number out of thirty. If you go longer than three minutes, points are deducted. Each team will be composed of four poets (and an alternate).
The registration deadline for Hullabaloo 2012 has passed; however, we are still accepting registrations for the waiting list. To sign up: send an email to wordplaypoets@gmail.com that includes the name of your school, its address, and a telephone contact for your team (preferably a teacher or coach's mobile phone). You do not need to pay the registration fee to get on the waiting list.
UPDATE (December 1, 2011): 16 teams have registered.The championship runs April 10–14, 2012. It will be a complete poetry slam tournament, plus workshops and side events. It will be a spoken word extravaganza!
On April 10, we'll have check-in and orientation for all the teams and an evening poetry jamboree where each team will be invited to perform an introductory poem. On April 11 & 12, there will be preliminary bouts in which each team will compete twice (in bouts of four teams), once each day. The top 8 teams in prelims advance to semi-finals on April 13, which will be two bouts of four teams each. The top 2 teams from each semi-final advance to finals on April 14, and the winner of that bout is the 2012 Hullabaloo Champion. This is the same basic format as the National Poetry Slam and the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.
There will be workshops and side events for poets in the daytime on April 13th and 14th.
Each bout will be composed of five rounds. Four rounds of solo poems (no group pieces allowed) where each of team members perform. Then there will be a group piece round in which each team must perform a poem with at least two voices (up to four voices). After five rounds, the teams are ranked according to their cumulative scores (the highest possible score would be 150).
Now here's where it gets a bit complicated. Each team must perform a different team piece in each of the preliminary bouts, but if they advance to semi-finals and/or finals, they can repeat those two team pieces, if they choose. In other words, each team needs at least two group pieces.
As for solo poems, the team members must perform different poems in their slot in the prelims and semi-finals (if they make it that far), but they are allowed to repeat a poem on finals, if they choose. That means each individual poet must have at least three poems prepared.
These repeat rules will become more stringent in the following years (in other words, less repeats will be allowed). At this stage however, we want to keep the bar at a level where most schools, which are still just getting started, can still manage.
All competitors (including alternates) will receive a poet package including stickers, an artist pass, a t-shirt, and more!
Organizers
RC Weslowski is the founder and organizer of the Vancouver Youth Poetry Slam, which happens on the 4th Monday of every month at Café Deux Soleils (2096 Commercial Dr). He also helps run the quarterly show, Mashed Poetics, which mixes spoken word and classic rock and was the Artistic Director of the 2005 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. A surrealist heart beats hard and large inside of him and in 2008 RC Weslowski was named the male Poet of Honour at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.
Chris Gilpin has been a workshop leader for the WordPlay, Poetry in Schools program since 2006 and became WordPlay's Program Coordinator in 2009. Chris is also the 2011 Vancouver Individual Poetry Slam Champion, a two-time Vancouver Poetry Slam Team member, the 2008 Haiku Deathmatch Champion, winner of the Vancouver 2009 CBC Poetry Face-off, and finalist in the 2010 Write Bloody manuscript competition.
