Slamlandia January Literary Arts Show ft. Ken Yoshikawa

Join us on JANUARY 9TH for a Thursday Poetry Open Mic and Slam!

This is a qualifying slam to get into our semi finals for our Grand Slam later this year.

Doors and sign-ups are at 6:30 PM
Get there on time to get a spot in the open mic or slam!
Show begins at 7:00 PM

Literary Arts
925 SW Washington Street
Portland, OR 97205

This show is all ages.
Please see our Accessibility and Safer Space info below.

No door admission.

We will have a feature from the fantastic Ken Yoshikawa!

Ken Yoshikawa is a half-Japanese third culture American poet-actor from Portland, Oregon. He has been active in the Portland spoken word community since 2014. In his theatre career he’s appeared at Artists Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage, NW Children’s Theatre, Oregon Adventure Theatre, and Portland Playhouse. In 2019 he released his first spoken word album Quiver (Lightship Press), and performed his autobiographical poetic solo play The Art of Fly Swatting at the Pan Asian Repertory off-broadway in NYC. His poems have appeared in Nailed Magazine, Letters from the Void, Hapa Mag, and Discover Nikkei. His first full length poetry book Monster Colored Glasses is out now on Lightship Press.

★ •*´¨`*• O P E N • M I C •*´¨`*• ★

The open mic will start the show out. The open mic is a great way to share your wonderful poetry! You can share 1-2 poems lasting a maximum of 3 minutes.

★ •*´¨`*• T H E • S L A M •*´¨`*• ★

☆ The slam will be 2 rounds.
The first 12 poets to sign up will perform in the 1st round.

☆ Poems will be scored on a scale of 0-10. There will be 5 judges. The lowest score and highest score for each poet will be dropped and the middle 3 scores will be added together.

☆ There is a 3 minute time limit for poems performed in the slam – with a 10 second grace period. A 1/2-point time penalty will be subtracted from the poet’s score for every 10 seconds they go past the time limit.

☆ The 6 poets with the highest scores will move on to the 2nd round.

★ •*´¨`*• A C C E S S I B I L I T Y •*´¨`*• ★

There is one entrance with no stairs. The event is on the bottom floor of the building. Any seating can be adjusted to make room for any accessibility equipment. There is also a bathroom that can be accessed on the first floor.

★ •*´¨`*• S A F E R • S P A C E • P O L I C Y •*´¨`*• ★

(1) – Slamlandia is committed to the safety of our community and all of its members. This includes but is not limited to performers, audience members, venue staff, volunteers, featured poets, and Executive Council members. We will not allow any act of hate, bigotry, harassment, or violence within our space and will prohibit the entrance of those who have committed these acts in or outside of our space.

(2) – The Slamlandia community is a community based in consent. It is the responsibility of individuals initiating contact to receive enthusiastic consent for the following activities:

☆ Physical contact
☆ Discussion of personal or heavy topics
☆ Discussion of poetry shared on stage

(3) – Slamlandia does not censor our mic and space – with the exception of hate speech. Hate speech includes, but is not limited to threats of violence, the use of slurs for a group you do not belong to, racism, sexism, transphobia, transmisogyny, homophobia, classicism, and ableism.

☆ Marginalized voices expressing anger toward the group of people oppressing them does not fall under the category of hate speech.

☆ In the event that a performer is using hate speech on stage, an Executive Council member will end their performance and ask them to leave the stage.

☆ In the event that a performer uses hate speech, it is the responsibility of the Executive Council to explain to the performer why this was a violation of our hate speech policy to the best of their ability and point them to resources for further explanation.