The cheers emanating from the Castle fraternity house last night could have easily been mistaken as coming from a sporting event.
However, the source of the uproar was poetry, not basketball.
"Best of Philly Collegiate Slam" -- a performance-poetry competition in which participants are judged on both the quality and delivery of their work -- was sponsored by Penn's performance-poetry group, the Excelano Project. The event attracted an audience of approximately 100 people to the Psi Upsilon fraternity house -- commonly known as "the Castle" -- on 36th and Locust streets.
Students from Temple University, Haverford College, Drexel University and New York University joined Penn students in supporting the poets. All proceeds raised from the $5 entrance and $3 participation fees will be donated to the World AIDS foundation.
The energy escalated as the original nine contestants were reduced in two rounds to two final contestants. A tie extended the competition one more round, and after both finalists received standing ovations, College sophomore Caroline Rothstein was proclaimed the winner and awarded $100.
The readings were eloquent and passionate, punctuated by the nodding, clapping, snapping, stamping and shouting of the audience. Even the judges, five people randomly chosen from the audience, were appropriately cheered or booed.
Excelano Project Director and College senior Carlos Gomez explained that performance poetry "is an interactive sport" between the audience and the poets.
Poets addressed topics such as race, sexuality and feminism. They were given three minutes per poem and judged on a one to 10 scale.
Audience members reacted well to the event. "A lot of the things that were said spoke to me," College sophomore Sami Ellong said.
Contestant Nina Ball, a Temple junior said, "I think it's healthy to put your work out there."
According to Gomez, current poetry slams are not what their founder, Chicago construction worker and poet Marc Smith, envisioned.
"Marc Smith wants it to be white people sitting around reading poems, and he's upset that now the pioneers of the spoken-word culture are blacks and Latinos," Gomez said.
"There's a huge racial divide in the spoken word community, and [Smith is] trying to control something that's no longer his."
Originally started in Chicago as a gimmick to get people to come into coffeehouses and listen to poetry, poetry slams are now participated in nationwide and organized under Poetry Slam, Incorporated, a national nonprofit organization.
The top four Penn contestants and an alternate will travel to University of California, Berkeley in April for the National Collegiate Poetry Slam Competition.
