Poets gather to present work during competitive arts event

Kay Lynn’s words hang in the air, the last line tumbling through the minds of the dozen or so people gathered in Frame of Reference Gallery. Silence for a moment, then applause. Lynn smiles and gives a slight bow, just a nod of the head, and returns to her seat.

It’s a Wednesday, and a group of people have chosen to spend their night reading and listening to poetry, though the snacks and boxed-wine are nice incentives for attending on their own.

These gatherings have been happening for two years now, with attendance running between a few creative souls up to 20-plus. When there’s at least three willing poets, the night ends with a poetry slam.

In a poetry slam, at least in this one, each poet reads three of their best poems, one at a time, while a trio of judges in the audience rates them on a scale of one to 10. Most poems receive around a seven or eight. After three rounds, the scores are averaged and one of the poets are named the winner.

Lynn’s “McDonald Creek” is her second poem, picked out from a thick spiral-bound book filled with poems and small accompanying pictures.

The poem receives scores of 6.9, 7.6 and 7.9. Tonight she’s competing with Caitlin Christopher and a poet introducing themselves as Genesis.

In the end, Lynn takes second. Christopher, who read poems about her fear of Parkinson’s disease and the idea of passion as embodied by a grasshopper, wins for the night.

Christopher, along with Sarah Williams, Andrea Catherine and Jason Heisey have been running the poetry slams for the last two years, having taken over after the original founder, Chris Kammerer, moved from the Flathead Valley.

While the idea of writing and sharing a poem, much less performing it, may seem daunting to some, it’s something Williams understands.

Williams, the host at last month’s slam, started things off with her own poem to get people to loosen up, and then opened the floor up to an open mic time, where anyone could read poems they or someone else wrote. After open mic, the slam happens — if enough people are willing to compete — and the audience hears three rounds of poems.

The Whitefish poetry slams are meant to be low stakes and low pressure. The slams don’t have the intense and “in your face” vibe that larger slams might have, she says, and most often the poems read are quiet, simple and personal.

“Besides just getting over the fact that it’s very scary to talk in front of people, it’s very low barrier to performing,” Williams says. “You can perform really whatever poetry you want within our sort of guidelines of time limitations, no hate speech, that kind of stuff. I think we provide a very welcoming environment.”

At last month’s slam, the poetry content ranged from health fears, creeks, school buses, and, at one point, cat rectums. The latter was meant to loosen people in the audience up with a laugh, but it likely stuck with a few people after the slam had ended.

The point is to offer an outlet for anyone to create and share what they’re thinking. Poems can be personal, Christopher explains, or they can be about something totally outside the poet’s life.

In a lot of cases, sharing personal feelings, especially difficult ones, through a poem is easier than just talking, she says.

“In regular life, when people ask you, ‘How are you,’ the response you’re supposed to give is, ‘Oh, I’m fine, I’m doing great.’ In conversation, it’s not OK to feel like crap. In poetry, it is fine, so it’s acceptable to live in that place,” she says.

The slams take place every month, usually in the second or third week, and anyone is invited to read, compete or just listen to poetry. The group has also done workshops, where a guest poet comes in and reads and helps other writers craft their own poetry, and a publication with the group’s poetry is still in the works and looking for submissions. A full schedule is available on the Flathead Poetry Slam Facebook page.

Whether the slams have four people or 60 people attending, Williams says she just think it’s neat to see people sharing the same interests.

“We’ve been doing this for almost two years, and every time people show up I’m surprised, because I’m just like, ‘Who else is interested in this?’ We keep getting people, and I don’t know how they hear about us,” she says, laughing. “If I think about it, that’s really cool. It’s something that the community is interested in.”

McDonald Creek

by Kay Lynn

Be a rock

Maybe one that through time

has eased down from the mountaintop

Be a rock..

Solid in experience, insight,

presence of mind

one imbued with the crystal striations

that glow with the spirit of the natural universe

You, a rock at the river’s edge.

A good stable rock that others can stand upon

to see far upstream or down

Or one that they can sit upon

to muse the rhythms of the passing flow

Be actually in the water now,

one of a series of stepping stones

that give good footing for safe crossing

Be a stone,

smooth and honed

rounded and warm in the afternoon sun.

Loadstone, touchstone, capstone, keystone,

(skipping stone!)

I’ll be one too.