Thursday 14th June 2018, Restaurant Torvi, Loviisankatu 8 – at 19:00
International Rules of Poetry Slam
1. Each poet signs up to compete at the given event by messaging the organiser in advance or registering 30 minutes before the start of the slam. The maximum number of slammers is 15.
2. Each poet may only perform their own original material.
3. Slam slots can last a maximum of 3 minutes. Each poet’s running time is counted from the first word the poet speaks. The organiser informs the performer and the audience if the time limit is exceeded. For every ten seconds exceeded, the poet looses 0,5 points. The judges will give the score they want to give and the points are then reduced depending on the length of the overtime as follows:
3:00:01 – 3:10 -0.5 points
3:10:01 – 3:20 -1.0 points
3:20:01 – 3:30 -1.5 points
4. No props or music are allowed during the slam, excluding the microphone, mobile phone, Ipad, paper or book from which the poet may read.
5. The order that the poets compete is randomly drawn from the hat for the first round.
6. Five non-competing members of the slam audience make up the judging panel of the slam. The organiser picks the judges from among those impartial members of the audience who volunteer to serve as judges. The judges are chosen either beforehand or at the behest of the organiser or MC.
7. The judges give points to each performance on a scale of 1.0 to 10.0, with 10.0 being the highest score. The lowest and highest scores are ignored and the three remaining scores are added together. In the case of a tie during the first round, both poets continue onto the semi-finals. In the case of a tie during semi-finals, both poets continue onto the final. If there’s a tie during the final round, both poets will perform an extra poem to decide a winner.
8. Half of the poets continue to the second round. The poet with the lowest score performs their set first, the one with the second lowest performers second, and so on. In case there’s an uneven number of poets entering the first round, the number of poets carrying on to the semi-finals is rounded up. For example, if there are 11 poets competing on the first round, 6 of them will go through to the semi-finals. The scores of the previous rounds are not accumulated.
9. Three poets perform in the third, final round of the slam, with the winner being decided by the panel of judges.
10. Winner of the slam will represent Lahti at National Poetry Slam Championships at Korjaamo (Helsinki) Saturday 15.9.