Slam master poet Sean McGarragle will be bringing a love of the spoken word to Moose Jaw for this week’s Saskatchewan Festival of Words.
McGarragle is a well known slam poet in Vancouver and will not only be giving readings but teaching other people his art at a poetry slam workshop on Thursday.
Slam poetry began in the 1980s in Chicago with a construction worker called Marc Smith, McGarragle told the Times-Herald.
“He wanted to give poetry . . . back to the people and do an event that was fun and people would enjoy and the audience could take more of an active role.
“A lot of poetry events as far as he was concerned were boring and kind of insular in that you would have people reading for their students or friends but it was not generally available to the public at large unless you were highly educated and had a huge knowledge base of classic literature,” he said.
McGarragle said the idea behind a slam poetry contest is a poet must read their work within three minutes without the aid of props or music.
Read more in a future Times-Herald edition.
