Poetry Slam - the poets' battle on the Lagerhalle stage!

What exactly is a Poetry Slam?

A Poetry Slam is a modern spoken-word competition in which authors perform their own texts on stage in front of a live audience. The format originated in Chicago in the mid-1980s and has since spread worldwide - today, almost every major German city hosts at least one regular Poetry Slam.

Three simple rules apply:
All texts must be written by the performers themselves, known as "Slam Poets" or "Poetry Slammers".
No props or musical instruments are allowed on stage.
Each performer must stay within a set time limit - on average five minutes (at the Lagerhalle, seven minutes).

So the artists have nothing but their bodies and their own words to win over the audience in five (seven) minutes with a funny, thoughtful, or rhyming piece of stage literature. At the end of the evening, the audience votes to decide a winner - but the spoken word and the art itself always matter more than the competition. Traditionally, texts tend to be comic or serious, often drawing on everyday life or personal experience. In practice, anything goes and anything can be expected.

http://www.lektora.de/poetry-slam/