Big Cheese Poetry Slam

Overview

A Competition for poets to make some cheddar!

Back in the 1980s, a few poets at The Green Mill got reaaaaaaaal tired of hearing long-winded poetry– after all, we can only hear Howl by Allen Ginsberg so many times in one night. And thus: poetry slams were born! A fast-paced, electrifying competition where every poet gets three minutes and ten seconds to say whatever they want with their own words. Five randomly selected judges score each poem from 0.0 to 10.0; we drop the highest and lowest scores, total the middle three, and that’s the poet’s score.

At the Big Cheese Poetry Slam at the Zhou B Art Center, we welcome up to 16 poets in Round One. From there, we cut to our Top 5 for Round Two, and by the end of the night, we crown our Top 3 winners and name our newest Big Cheese Poet of the Week.

Official Slam Rules

1. No Props
2. No Music
3. No Nudity* *We know, we know—one day, pants may be optional. Today is not that day.
4. This is an unofficial rule, as it is commonly understood our poets must perform their OWN ORIGINAL Poetry while at a poetry slam. 

Admission

• Performers and judges get in FREE.
• Audience members: $20 at the door. Early bird pricing and other discounts available. If money’s tight right now, talk to the Big Cheese team about our NOTA programs.

Sign-Up & Showtime

• Poet Sign-Up: 7:30 PM sharp
• Show Starts: 8:00 PM(ish)—because Poet Time is real and the CTA is too. 

See you soon at the Zhou B Art Center—where the metaphors fly, the scores get spicy, and Chicago’s poetry community shows up loud and proud.