Here is an addition to the slam discussion. Or maybe not...it's not exactly slam but more like a performance poetry.

I have a group of work that I wrote for multiple voices to read. (I have to give the credits to Jena Osman, my former teacher, for this...) On the page, the "text" looks like music scores, which could be visually interesting. And when read, it seems like the work wants to go toward being a band. Only they were all words and words and words. Music is read, not played.

To me this kind of performance, first of all, was very fun and also difficult to write. You get to be like a movie director. You get words scattered on the page, and on stage, the piece usually grabs the attention of the audience primarily because there is a group of reders, not one reader, up there.

What's particular about this kind of work in terms of "poetics," I think, is the multilayered voices. So much can be expressed through vaqueness when several voices speak at the same time, as well as clarity when a single voice speaks or voices speak simultaneously. The experience is also multi-dimensional both on the page and on state.