An American Poet in France

This summer Dallas local Joaquin Zihuatanejo traveled to France to compete in the World Poetry Slam Competition. As part of his travels, Joaquin agreed to write a few articles detailing his experience, below is the first of these articles.

An American Poet in France

by Joaquin Zihuatanejo

This all started for me in December of 2006 when I competed against 76 other poets from 76 cities representing eight countries at the Individual World Poetry Slam Competition.  At that competition, I was lucky enough to make the final stage of 12 poets.  After moving from the first round of 12 poets to the second round of seven poets, I had scored high enough to make it to the final round of four.  Jared Paul from Providence scored a 29.3.  Andrea Gibson from Denver scored a 29.4 and Mike McGee from San Jose scored a 29.6.  I was the fourth and last poet to read in the competition and I scored a perfect score of 30, but…

There’s always a “but” in every good story isn’t there. I read for three minutes and 11 seconds.  In a poetry slam, you are only allowed to read for three minutes and 10 seconds; after that you receive a .5 deduction off your score for every 10 second period you go over your allotted time, so when it was all said and done, I received a 29.5 and Mike McGee beat me with a 29.6.

I was crushed not because I lost, but because I had worked so hard, sacrificed so much of my time and energy to make it to that moment and because I poured every bit of myself onto that stage only to lose because of a one second time penalty.  I didn’t think I could ever reproduce the energy, the poetry, the performance that gave that night in Charlotte.

Fast forward two years.  The original host city of the 2008 Individual World Poetry Slam had to withdraw from hosting the competition, so with only a few months until the tournament, Charlotte stepped forward and volunteered to host the event again.  When I found this out, I thought to myself, “the same city, the same stage, maybe the planets are lining up for me.”  So I registered for the 2008 Individual World Poetry Slam….again.

The drive from Dallas to Charlotte was one of the longest of my life; partly form the 16 hours behind the wheel, partly from the incessant rain that seemed to follow me from Dallas to Charlotte.  However despite the miserable drive, I was absolutely excited about going back and competing because I had written a wealth of new poems and I was determined to do all new poems if I made it to the final stage.

At the opening ceremonies, one of the things that occurs is the draw where every poet prays that they don’t pull the one in their opening round.  No one wants to pull the one knowing that 12 amazing poets will follow them and that scores tend to get higher as the night goes on, a phenomenon called score creep.  Well, I pulled a one, meaning in my first round, a one minute round in which no poem can be longer than one minute and 10 seconds, I had to go first, so I decided to take a chance and perform a comedic poem that’s big and theatrical.  My plan backfired and I finished eighth after the first round of competition.  So in the next round, the four minute round, I decided to do a poem that I hoped to perform on the final stage, a poem entitled “Speaking in Tongues.”  The way scoring works in the Individual World Poetry Slam is similar to golf, the lower your cumulative score, the better you are doing, and as far as making the cut for the final stage, the over/under seems to always fall somewhere around 12.  After the first round my cumulative score was 8, so I knew I needed to win two of the remaining three rounds and score no worse than third in the other.

“Speaking in Tongues” received a perfect score of 30 giving me a 1 in the four minute round.  The next night “The Television Will Not Be Revolutionized,” a poem about the lack of anything remotely real in “reality” TV was awarded the second highest score in the two minute round.  “Poem for Jon,” a poem about a deaf student I taught a few years ago scored high enough for me to win the three minute round.  So my overall cumulative score was a 12, which was good enough to rank me tenth out of 76 poets after the first two days of competition.

So I had made it to the final stage…again.

I drew the 3, meaning I went third in the first round of the biggest poetry slam competition in the country.  Nine extraordinary poets would follow me with only seven poets making it to the next round of seven.

I decided to take a chance and perform a poem entitled “Poem for Keri.”  The poem is a persona poem about a former student diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome, and the chance comes from the fact that it’s a poem that’s not loud as some slam poems can be.  It was very well received taking the second highest score in the round.  Many competing poets and audience members told me they thought it was the best poem of the night.

In the second round I took an even bigger chance by performing “What I Would Say to Them” a short, soft spoken poem written for my mother’s silence and my father’s absence.  But in the end, it is a love poem for both of them, for the young, passionate, ridiculous people they once were.  The poem scored high enough for me to make it to the final round of five.

In the final round I chose a brand new poem entitled “Unwritten” about the ugliness and hypocrisy of the competitive nature of slam poetry.  I received a standing ovation and a perfect score of 30 and won the championship trophy that night.  Along with the trophy I also won a book deal with Wordsmith Press and I won the privilege to represent The United States at the World Cup of Poetry Slam in Paris, France June 16^th through the 19^th.

I will be competing against 14 poets from 14 countries all over the world.  Each poet must speak in his native language, so I along with the other competing poets had to submit the 6 poems that we plan to use in the competition back in January so that the festival coordinators could spend months translating our poems into French to be scrolled across a screen behind us as we perform them.

So I leave in a few days for Paris and the biggest poetry slam competition in the world.  I hope I do well and make my family and my country proud.  I look forward to meeting the other competing poets and hearing their work.  I look forward to sharing my work with an audience on the other side of the Atlantic, but most of all I look forward to kissing my wife somewhere along the Seine as the sun sets over the city.