SlamMN's Allison Broeren

Today, folks from all around the U.S., Canada, and even New Zealand will be traveling to Minneapolis for the four-day Women of the World Poetry Slam competition. The annual event will showcase the world's best performers, all of whom are vying for top slam poetry honors onstage.

This is the first year that Minneapolis has hosted the event.

Related content:
Women of the World Poetry Slam: Minneapolis Qualifier

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Photo by Simi Kang

Bao Phi with his daughter

This evening, two acclaimed local poets will be giving a reading sponsored by BIrchbark Books at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Performance poet Bao Phi, author of Sông I Sing, and Ed Bok Lee, winner of the poetry Minnesota Book Award 2012 for Whorled, have known each other for many years. For a brief time they even performed slam together. Recently, they released their poetry books together.

"We both work from an urgency," Phi says. "We both love language, and exploring these things about our identity, how we are perceived, and how that fits into the larger scheme of things."

Phi says he's planning to do a mix of new material and excerpts from his book.

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Macalester senior Dylan Garity performs for City Pages

The Macalester College slam poetry team's 2010-2012 season was the most successful run in college slam history. They ranked third and first, and recently traveled to Los Angeles where they placed second. Team member Dylan Garity was also named Best Poet this year.

The team is made up of freshman Rachel Rostad; sophomores Anna Binkovitz, Kat Fleckenstein, and Abbie Shain; junior Niko Martell; and senior Garity. Together, they have spent an entire semester writing and workshopping six to 10 hours a week. They consider themselves to be a family, and respect each other's work. Their focus is on writing authentic poems taken from their own life experiences.

Check out a few examples:

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Cole Sarar

Sam Cook of St. Paul's Soap-boxing team

​"No team has ever won the National Poetry Slam three times in a row," slam master Sam Cook explains about the upcoming challenge for St. Paul's Soap Boxing team. "In fact, there is only one team that can even boast three wins." Soap Boxing has already won two years running, so the competition is heating up as they prepare for this month's nationals in Cambridge, MA.

But first they have to beat the local competition.

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​In 2001 Buddy Wakefield quit his executive assistant job and hit the road to pursue a dream. For over two years he toured the country in his Honda Civic, crafting his unique slam poetry that has earned him a reputation for passionate performances blending intense emotion, honesty, and humor.

In 2004 and 2005 Wakefield won the Individual World Poetry Slam Championship. He has also received accolades from NPR, HBO, BBC, and CBC, as well as from Norman Lear, Ani DiFranco, and Don Beck. He has toured with DiFranco, Sage Francis, Saul Williams, and numerous poets, both solo and in groups.

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Ward Rubrecht

St. Paul poet Six is Nine

If you notice a lot of folks wandering around downtown St. Paul this week with their noses buried in notebooks, repeating muttered phrases like exorcists casting out a possessing demon, don't worry: They're just poets, honing the latest weapons in their arsenal, sharpening their powers of verbosity for the combats of National Poetry Slam, an enormous tournament of spoken word made up of 84 teams from around the country.

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