By NIKITA GRISE

Staff Writer

Hot damn! It’s a queer slam!

The power of poetry in performance struck Mahtay Café and Lounge Friday night when the downtown St. Catharines café played host to Hot Damn it’s a Queer Slam, an event specific to LGBTQ+ performers.

At the event, seven poets took to the stage to compete with original poems that were judged based on content and performance. Low scores met boos and chants of “higher!” from the audience, while high scores were applauded and cheered.

Cathy Petch, slam co-ordinator, explained between bites of her egg salad sandwich that the purpose of the event is to “raise queer voices and gain more audience where queer people weren’t.”

“A lot of queer people might only want to support queer things,” says Petch. “I find more than anything I’m increasing the audience for it, which is amazing.”

Hot Damn it’s a Queer Slam, now in its second season, has given queer poets a chance to have their voices heard in an accepting and welcoming environment.

Vidhi Gupta, a volunteer at the event, says, “I feel like a very close part of the community every time I attend a poetry slam. And it’s not just about poetry, it’s about people coming together and some camaraderie that you don’t find anywhere else.”

“As a queer newcomer to Canada there’s not a lot of avenues where I can reach out to people and feel like I’m not being judged.” Gupta moved to Canada from Mumbai and describes the slam scene as a safe space.

“As a poet I feel like I don’t have to identify as a queer person but as a poet,” says Gupta.

Spectators of the Queer Slam were wowed by performances covering topics ranging from self harm to skorts to cheese (and the things it smells) like to personality disorders.

Needless to say, there was never a dull moment. Especially when feature poet Alan Ginsberg took the stage to applause and amorous shouts of “Oh my god, it’s Alan Ginsberg!”

When Ginsberg asked what drew them to slam poetry, they said, “I forget the moment when I figured out that spoken word was A. a thing and B. that that’s the thing I should spend my time doing.”

“But right now I feel I’m gravitating towards it even still because it’s a way where I can say things that are true to myself that I will believe,” Ginsberg says. “Validating my own experiences for myself.”

Ginsberg has been actively involved in the slam poetry scene for four years, starting in his home town of Baltimore, Maryland.

“I went to a few sporadic open mics in the years before then,” started Ginsberg, “but it was never anything where I’d be like ‘OK, every month I’m coming here’ or like ‘I need to write poems because I need to perform poems.’”

For Ginsberg it was about the fun and the community that the slams made.

“The community you build through doing this helps you feel validated within your emotions. And process it in a way that is not only healthier than just bottling it all up but oftentimes quicker,” says Ginsberg.

Jaimie Goddard, co-ordinator of St. Catharines’ monthly poetry slams, says, “What’s great is that everyone comes and they listen. That’s such a beautiful thing to me, that you can show up and listen.”

Goddard explains that slam poetry has become more of a mainstream event in the last couple of years. “There’s scene’s like this all across Canada and the world.”

“We have amazing talent all over southern Ontario that is being featured here and being discovered through this slam. It’s a really fun show,” says Petch.