(Photo courtesy Leandra Diaz)
ORLANDO | Southern Fried Poetry Slam, a multi-day performing arts festival, will come to Orlando and Eatonville for the first time for its 34th annual tournament on June 9-13.
It will kick off with a tribute to American writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, who grew up in historic Eatonville, the first all-Black municipality in the United States. The talent of 200+ poets, orators and writers from across the world will perform for audiences and compete for cash and prizes.
Shawn Welcome, Host City Ambassador and president of the Literary Arts Council of Central Florida, grew up in Orlando and says he’s excited that his home city finally gets the chance to see a national competition for spoken word poetry at such a large scale.
“We’ve always sent poets to represent Orlando in other parts of the country, but have not hosted something at this scale for spoken word in particular ever,” Welcome says. “Being that it’s a first-time experience for the community and for the poets coming to Orlando as well, I think it’s a great opportunity to show off our city and to bring that energy and that experience in this community.”
Welcome says that highlighting the importance and history of Eatonville will be highly impactful and bring the town greater exposure. The kickoff event, called Revive Zora, will take place in the Eatonville library, bringing Southern Fried’s energy, community and education to an academic space.
The festival will feature a variety of events across multiple locations over the course of its four days. Highlights include an LGBTQ+ open mic, a Haiku Death Match, various writing workshops and a community cookout.
“It’s a whole community gathering,” Welcome explains. “There are elements in the competition that strengthen the social cohesion of the slam community that is unlike anything else in the country.”
Welcome says that being in a place with writers coming from all different regions, representing all races, creeds and identities, allows festivalgoers and performers a unique opportunity to hear from all of these various perspectives creatively all in one place.
“With Southern Fried, people are competing with that, those ideas and concepts and perceptions of their inner world and how they view the world,” Welcome says. “I think the more of that we have, the better we become as human beings, and the better we can see that we don’t live in a vacuum. Everyone’s different.”
Raymond Jimenez, Southern Fried Volunteer Coordinator and member of Orlando Poetry Slam, says that Southern Fried will allow Orlando to see what poetry is capable of, while also bringing in vast amounts of writers from across the country who will share their own ideas of what poetry means.
To Jimenez, the best way to describe a poetry slam is like a kung-fu competition with words. Competitors don’t hit each other physically, they use the impact of their lexicon.
“I’m hoping people will see that there’s a variety that’s out there that they didn’t think possible,” Jimenez shares. “That poetry is not just simply something academic that you pursue, but has meaning in your regular everyday life, that you have access to it, and it has access to you if you let it.”
Jimenez says that even in smaller slams, poets across various walks of life with different worldviews are brought together in close proximity. He says that when participating in poetry events and competitions, he’s often struck by the fact that the desires of all of these different people were nearly the same.
“Unless you’re shutting your ears purposefully, you can’t not engage in these types of spaces and not get a better understanding of where other people are coming from,” Jimenez says. “People you may never have met in the first place. It really widens your experience.”
Jimenez says that poetry offers a unique avenue for people to express their woes when they don’t have the opportunity to work with someone like a therapist. He says open mics give poets the unique opportunity to show other people what they’re going through.
Jimenez says a big part of sharing spoken word is the audience relating back, snapping when they hear about pain they share. He says that many poets find great joy in knowing they aren’t alone.
Leandra Diaz, who also goes by Slim Truth, is a local poet, coach and author. Diaz says that Southern Fried Poetry this year feels like a homecoming and that it feels good to have something like this so close to home. She says it will also be a great opportunity to show the rest of the poetry world her city’s talents.
“They can see what our city has to offer and how much love we have and how much art we have,” Diaz shares.
Diaz says she found slam poetry like most artists do, when she felt like she had nothing else to look forward to. Seven years ago, Diaz says she went to one of her first live poetry performances. Ironically, Jimenez and Welcome were among them, some of the first Diaz had ever seen perform.
Diaz says that being there changed everything for her. She says she had never been around so many people sharing vastly different perspectives that all connected on a central concept. When she got home that night, she started writing and says that to this day, she has never stopped.
“Then every single day after that, I just had something more to look forward to, either performing or just adding to whatever I wrote the night before,” Diaz says.
Welcome thinks that the world is desperate for something as authentic and real as this type of art, which he says comes from vulnerable places within every poet.
Welcome adds that there’s something healing and affirming about hearing something you’ve felt but couldn’t quite put into words, or seeing someone represent it through poetry or performance.
“There’s a laundry list of issues that our world is grappling with that I feel like a festival like this can really be like a grounding and healing opportunity for so many people,” Welcome shares.
Registration information, tickets and more can be found at SouthernFriedPoetrySlam.com.
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