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Manchester poets to compete at national event

‘it’s the late-night-swing-gig on the outskirts of town. People coming in off the streets, coming outta their shoes and getting down.”

This written line from Slam Free or Die team member Derek Avila captures the atmosphere of Milly’s Tavern on Thursday nights in Manchester.

On Aug. 2, the five Slam Free or Die poets representing New Hampshire at the National Poetry Slam performed their send-off event at Milly’s Tavern.

“This is one of our biggest turnouts” said Mark Palos, one of the coaches of the Slam Free or Die team. “It’s really nice because we needed the support before leaving for competition.”

Palos, along with Christopher Clauss, Sam Teitel, Derek Avila, Beau Williams, Mark Palos and Heidi Therrien, left Aug. 6 for the weeklong spoken word competition in the National Poetry Slam, the world’s largest competitive poetry event.

“This is our sixth consecutive year competing at Nationals,” Palos said.

Open mike poetry in Manchester originated in 2005 at Bridge Cafe.

“One of my friends approached me and had this idea to put a team of poets together for national competition. Sending a team was Coach Jordan’s idea,” Palos said, referring to the other coach for the Slam Free or Die team.

The first year of national competition for the Granite State team was in 2006. According to Palos, the first couple years of competition was rocky. Last year, however, the team nearly made it to the semifinals.

“It all depends on the judging. They pick the judges randomly from the audience,” Palos said.

Palos also said judging is based on two components: the quality of the writing and the physical performance of the poem.

“I think this year our team really has a shot,” he said.

“We live in a disconnected era, the era of Twitter. It’s harder for people to connect with other people on a deeper level,” said Slam Free or Die team member Sam Teitel. “Poetry gives you connection and insight into other people’s experiences in a certain way that you don’t get in other places.”

Teitel has been writing poetry since his childhood, but became an active reader at Milly’s open mike night in 2007 when a friend encouraged him to share a reading.

“I think it’s growing. I think it’s exploding. More people are becoming interested in slam,” Teitel said.

Teitel also said he won’t know what poems he will read for national competition until about five minutes before the show.

“So much depends on the mood of the night, the judges and the audience,” he said. “At the beginning of the summer, we all showed up with a folder of poems that we would like to consider for competition.”

Two poems by Teitel that may be a possibility for national competition are “The Language of Loss,” a poem about coping with the death of his mother, and “The Assasin and The Giant.”

“Loss is a strange and complex language that a person can only learn through immersion,” Teitel writes in “The Language of Loss.”

“The poem was the hardest for me to write and most difficult to perform because I lost my mother to Lou Gehrig’s disease after she had been sick for five years,” he said.

Teitel and the rest of the Slam Free or Die team performed at the preliminary competition Aug. 7 and 8. If the Slam Free or Die team impresses the judges, they will make it past the preliminaries and into the semifinals Friday, Aug. 10.

Open mike nights at Milly’s Tavern, 500 Commercial St., are 7-11 every Thursdays. There is a $3 cover.

“The show is open to everyone. You don’t have to read in order to attend. Sometimes hearing the spoken words is just as powerful,” Teitel said.

Katelyn Dobbs can be reached at 594-6549 or kdobbs@
nashuatelegraph.com.