The 2006 National Poetry Slam is invading the Hideout Theatre this week.

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OVER 300 POETS TO CONVERGE ON AUSTIN THIS AUGUST FOR LARGEST PROJECTED NATIONAL POETRY SLAM

Poets from across North America and Europe to celebrate 20 years of slam

The 2006 National Poetry Slam, which will kick off on Wednesday, August 9 with 75 teams competing in eight venues in downtown Austin and the South Congress district, will culminate with the Individual Finals show on Friday, August 11 at the historic Paramount Theater and the Team Finals competition on Saturday, August 12 at the newly-revitalized Palmer Auditorium, with tickets for both events available at gettix.net.

"When we held Nationals in Austin in 1998, it was the largest one in history," said co-director Mike Henry. "Selling out the Paramount Theater for poetry was an unthinkable accomplishment at the time, and now it's part of slam's considerable lore. In 2006, Austin is ready to add another chapter to the story and make history again."

The National Poetry Slam is the premier annual event for poetry slammers across the globe. Billed as the competitive art of performance poetry, slam was invented in Chicago in July 1986 by Marc Smith, a construction worker-turned-poet who included the slam as part of his performance poetry troupe's weekly show at the Green Mill Tavern, an uptown Chicago watering hole once frequented by Al Capone.

The slam, initially a King-of-the-Hill-styled gimmick involving two poets dueling against one another, quickly evolved into a competition involving all comers reading their poems and being scored by a panel of judges, selected from the audience, who rated the poems on an Olympic-style 0-10 scale.

The slam spread to San Francisco, Boston, New York, and Ann Arbor by the late '80s, and thanks to MTV's interest in spoken word in the early '90s, Lollapalooza's inclusion of a spoken word stage on its 1994 tour, the release of the documentary film SlamNation in 1998, and the debut of the HBO original series, Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry in the early '00s, slam has grown exponentially in its audience, in the number of cities staging slam events, and its execution during its two decades as an art form.

Sometimes raucous entertainment and sometimes riveting confession, the slam movement has sustained and developed a format that has supplanted the open mike poetry reading as the prime live medium for 21st century poetry. Because of its cardinal rule of a three-minute time limit, the poets compete in a fast-paced show which combines the thrill of competition with polished, dynamic deliveries that ably showcase its ever-growing ranks of poets, spanning a diverse range of ages, ethnicities, backgrounds, and writing and performance styles.

The slam has not only found its way into popular culture, being referenced by television programs from The George Lopez Show to The Simpsons, but is also a major contributing factor in a recent resurgence of interest in poetry. The National Poetry Slam, which ran on a shoestring budget for much of its early history, is now regularly funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, by local and state government agencies, and by corporate sponsors.

The National Poetry Slam pits teams of three to five members against one another in five-team "bouts." The teams are formed through slam competitions throughout North America and Europe, which take place during a September to May slam season. The teams, representing, venues in cities from huge metroplexes to small towns practice throughout the summer for the event. All the teams compete the first two nights, and the top 20 teams compete on the third night, with the four winners of those bouts facing off in a team finals competition which closes the event. Nationals serves as a convention as well as a competition, offering workshops and daytime reading events which are free and open to the public. The daytime events and open mikes featuring many of the competing poets include a grief and remembrance reading, a group piece showcase highlighting ensemble work many of the teams create over the summer, a head-to-head haiku battle, and the always-irreverent nerd slam, to name a few.

For the first time in National Poetry Slam history, Austin has received the bid to host two years in row. and will host both the 2006 and 2007. This reflects not only the increasing scope of the event -only a handful of cities can provide the necessary venues and audience to host 80 teams - but also reflects the trust the slam community has in the Austin team of organizers, and the high-regard the slam community has for Austin's well-schooled, responsive audiences. Austin slam poets have performed everywhere from the annual FronteraFest, a highly-regarded experimental theater festival, to the hallowed halls of Austin's City Council Chambers. In fact, popular Austin mayor Will Wynn counts himself among the local slam's biggest fans. More information about venues, tickets, competitors, and a schedule of events will be made available at the event website, www.nps2006.com, in the coming months.

Other notable events in slam's 20th year celebration include a 20th Anniversary of Slam Celebration Week July 23-29 (involving slams across North America doing special events), and the premiere of a new documentary film, Slam Planet: War of the Words, which chronicles the fortunes of slam teams from Austin and New York City's Bowery Poetry Club at the 2004 National Poetry Slam in St. Louis.