Alyssa VanPelt-Cathcart, Staff Writer
Oneonta’s Literary Festival proudly brings back literary traditions with their local poetry slam scene. Robb Thibault, Director of Hunt Union at SUNY Oneonta, has been running poetry slams through SUNY Oneonta from 2001 until the pandemic. Now, for the festival he is hosting the first slam since the pandemic. Through the community support of the Oneonta Literary Festival, B Side Ballroom & Supper Club allowed the slam to take place within their establishment. The event took place at 9 P. M. on October 19th, 2024.
Thibault gave the crowd an energetic opening as he broke down the rules and disclaimers for the event. Through his dramatics and humor, he established that there will be five judges scoring from zero to ten whereas they are permitted to use decimals so there will be less of a chance of tying. Poets must perform an original poem within three minutes—starting from the first noise they make to when they finish reading.
There were a few poets reading who were not scored. Their warm-up poet Richard Bernsten who has been a teacher for forty years, their sacrifice to be the baseline of scoring, and two featured poets. The first featured poet to present was Matt Coonan, a current fourth grade teacher. He has published a collection of poems titled, Toy Gun (2023), through Button Poetry. Toy Gun, according to Coonan, is to navigate trauma in writing and as the poems progress in the collection, there is a turning point of hope. The second featured poet was Kristen Tomanocy, having received fourth nationally at the ACUI College Union Poetry Slam Invitational in 2008-II and currently teaching English at a middle school in Queens. Tomanocy read poetry about her mother, the cosmos, her experience camping with her father, and the simple joys of life. She artistically and beautifully expresses, paraphrasing, why have many metaphors when you can make it real by making it plain.
Among the five judges for the slam, there was an invited guest judge. Willy Palomo is a published author who wrote a collection of poems titled, Wake the Others: A Biography of My Motherland. Earlier in the day, Palomo hosted a Poetry Slam workshop with the support of Tessa Yang, an associate professor at Hartwick College who earned her MFA at Indiana University where she had met Palomo. Palomo has always been creative growing up, starting with hip hop and rap to writing his own poetry. He began attending poetry slams as a teenager. According to Palomo, poetry slams began in the 1980s in Chicago as a part of bar culture with the traditional rules being three rounds with three minutes to perform where poets could do anything. Judges were to be picked randomly from the crowd, the less familiar with poetry the better, and would score on a zero to ten scale with decimals.
It is through poetry slams that Palomo could rapidly improve their poetry because of the immediacy of the feedback. Poetry slams are one of the best ways to meet others, network, and build a community. A community that Palomo helped cultivate is Plumas Colectiva, originally a group of eight people from Salt Lake City who are passionate about the arts. Now, as their community has grown, they host local events to encourage the arts in diverse communities such as Hispanic and queer.
The arts community in Oneonta could be heard Saturday night at B Side. Many of the competing poets spoke on queer topics, mental health, and goals. The poets, Angela Cobb, Justine Bishop, Delilah Tinsley, Stefan Mirvil, Gianluca Avanzato, and Katie Hebert all were amazing in their spoken poetry. There was so much energy, emotion, and talent being shared. Palomo is right to say there is community at slams.
The winner of the poetry slam is Justine Bishop, an alumni of SUNY Oneonta, who’s poem tackled the struggle of recovering from self-harm. During their reading, they said speaking from the point of view of the self-harm, “I still remember the good ol’ days, when things got tough, you came to me.” It is through both Bishop’s performance and message that earned them the win for the Oneonta Literary Festival Poetry Slam.
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