Nitty Gritty Slam

For the first time in more over 10 years, the Albany region has its own official poetry slam venue.

NITTY GRITTY SLAM, hosted by Amani O+ and Jayton London, began in September 2011 at Valentine's. Open Mics are held the first and third Tuesdays of the month, slams on the third. Admission is $3.00 before 7:30PM $5.00. The Low Beat is located at 335 Central Avenue in Albany.

Who can attend or perform? Anyone and everyone. The doors open at 7pm, and that’s when the sign-up sheet to slam is put out on the bar.

What’s a poetry slam, you ask? It’s been awhile round these parts, so here goes. At each slam, judges are randomly selected from the audience who score poets who perform for up to three minutes and use nothing but words, their body and a microphone. The judges give each poet a score on a scale of 0.0 to 10.0. The scores are added up, and the poets with the higher numbers advance until two poets are left in the final round. At the end of the three rounds, the highest-scoring poet is awarded a prize—bragging rights to start, on up to a chance to join the slam team we’re sending to the National Poetry Slam!

NITTY GRITTY SLAM is presented by Albany Poets, Urban Guerilla Theatre, and the Frequency North Reading Series. We are registered and certified with PSI (Poetry Slam Inc.).

nittygrittyslam.com | valentinesalbany.com | http://Twitter.com\nittygrittyslam
instagram.com/slamalbany