For the first time in more than 3 years, the Albany region has its own official poetry slam venue! Slam Euphoria is a FREE Open Mic and Poetry Slam, hosted every first and third Friday, at Cafe Euphoria in Troy, NY. The doors open at 6:30pm, and that’s when the sign-up sheet is set out; open mic begins at 7pm and slam begins at 8pm. What’s a poetry slam, you ask? It’s been a while around these par
ts, so here goes. At each slam, judges are randomly selected from the audience who score poets who perform for up to three minutes and use nothing but words, their body and a microphone. The judges give each poet a score on a scale of 0.0 to 10.0. The scores are added up, and the poets with the higher numbers advance until two poets are left in the final round. At the end of the three rounds, the highest-scoring poet is awarded a prize—bragging rights to start, on up to a chance to join the slam team we’re sending around the nation!
