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It's fundraising time for Manchester. Most of the team will be driving from New Hampshire to St. Paul, MN. I'll be driving from Tennessee. Then we have a hotel room or rooms to pay for. Oh, and food. We like to eat. Not huge amounts, mind you, but enough that are voices are louder than our stomachs when we're on stage.

For those of you in Manchester/Portsmouth/etc. there will be activities and fundraisers and features and so forth. In fact, we're plotting a 7-day 24-hour reading. That is, every person on the team, including the coach and assistant coach, will read for 24 hours. Back to back. Seven days of poetry, with only 15 minute breaks every once in a while for bathrooms and food. I'll let you know more about that as plans come together.

In the meantime, we've got a PayPal account set up. If you'd be willing to donate something, even a dollar, that's one less dollar that comes out of our pockets while we're at Nationals. I'm devoted to my art and, for the duration of the competition, to the sport aspect of it, but I don't want to go hungry, I don't want to sleep in my car (with several other people), and I don't want to nervously watch my tank get emptier and emptier as I cross the great expanse of the rural Midwest, hoping that there's a gas station coming up soon and that my card will be accepted there. So, please, take a look. Toss us an amount you think worthwhile.

In fact, just to tempt you further, I'll re-post the link to Arts & Crafts, my free album of poems, essays, and conversations in both audio and video formats: http://www.jeffstumpo.com/stage.html. If you like the kind of stuff you hear from me; if you want spoken word that plays with the boundaries of what spoken word can and should do, donate. If you don't like what you hear - hey, we've got a team with diverse voices. There's a good chance you'd be supporting somebody whose poetry you like. You want a sestina about Ol' Dirty Bastard from the Wu-Tang Clan? We've got it. You want a poem from a woman to the person who used to be her girlfriend, then was her boyfriend, and is now just a friend? We've got it. You want towering toasts to the everyday folks who could, if nobody was looking, be gods? We've got it. You want a poem about what would happen if the author had a talking hamster? We've got it. You want a piece in sign language, written for three people? We're working on it ;-)

Take a look. Take a listen. Take a chance (on me... yeah, now that song is stuck in your head). Help send us to NPS.

http://sites.google.com/site/slamfreeordie2010/

Manchester all the way

I slammed in the Providence finals the other night. It was a lot of fun. I ran with three experimental/original pieces, and the judges absolutely did not approve. After putting out the untitled piece where I walk out into the audience and make a metaphorical poem of myself, "Wooden Boys and Deadlier Toys," and "There will be no reinvention of the wheel," I came in last. I remain a poet's poet, however, in that I sparked a great deal of interest among the other performers as far as new possibilities for what we can do in a slam. A big congrats goes to Trevor Liam Byrne-Smith, Phil Kaye, Jamila Woods, and Kai Huang.

This leaves me solidly on Manchester's team, and I'm quite happy about it. I think I've got a good feel for what we can do as a team, and it's time to begin plotting team pieces. I have one in mind, but I need to consult with another poet (not on the team) about the vocabulary. I don't want to delve into the overdone sing-speak-sing method of presenting a poem, but I'm very curious about our rhythmic and musical possibilities as a group. Finally, we may take some of our existing poems and rework them (extensively in some cases) into group pieces. Nationals should be prepared for a Manchester that, at times, comes straight out of left field with things not quite seen before. No revolutions, but definite evolutions. It doesn't hurt that we've got a variety of voices on the team - some funny, some serious, some intricate, some straightforward. This will be an interesting Nats.