Why we're the Family Woo

I found a picture of the master of ceremonies of AWP's All Collegiate Poetry and Flash Fiction Slam. His name is Jim Warner, he teaches poetry in the M.F.A. program at Wilkes, and at the end of the last reading, he ran after me with his card and insisted that I bring all of you to the AWP convention in Chicago next year.

Anyhow...I want to back up a bit and talk about how we acquired Woo-hood, as it were. I hadn't gone to the first All Collegiate Poetry Slam on Thursday night, but I'd heard about it the next morning-- including the faulty math of the judges and the generally chaotic atmosphere. I knew I'd missed something. Particularly, I knew I'd missed hearing some of you read your work.

Frankly, I'm not a slam kind of girl. The idea of a competitive poetry or fiction reading with immediate numerical scoring strikes me as an exercise in public humiliation-- a kind of confessional (often) version of American Idol (and I'm not much of a fan of American Idol). But on Friday night, I stayed up late (for me) until 10pm, and went down to the Flash Fiction Slam.

The room wasn't crowded. I suspect that slams, in general, are no longer quite "the thing" among AWP attendees. They're really exercises in vulnerability. But here were the Community College of Philadelphia students, all sitting in a row, ready to read their fiction, not out to impress anyone in particular. You were fearless. You also were magnificent.

Even before you read, I could tell that you'd acquired a reputation. Warner began a kind of cheerful/annoyed back and forth with Pat (at least I think it was Pat) about her place in the line-up, and when a bunch of you groused, he would refer to us collectively as "Philadelphia," and then, as each of you went up to read and we greeted each member of the home team with a big, fat, WOOOOO!-- well, that tells the rest of the story.

But you cheered EVERYONE who approached the podium, including the initial reader (WOOO!) whose pornographic paragraph scored (I think) a seven out of thirty points, including the girl from Chicago (WOOOO!) who ended her bit with a deliberate fainting spell, and even including the poised fellow who read from what seemed to be a published anthology of short fiction, and got a quick and heart-breaking perfect score from the judges (as he came up for a second perfect round, a half-hearted but distinct response of "woooo.").

I do hope that all of you will post some of what you read during the two slams and the open reading that followed. I also hope you keep in touch with Jim Warner. He seems to want to keep in touch with you. I found his myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/manuscriptradio

Hey...he has a blog as well. I wonder if we're in it.