It was a historic night - a three-way tie for first in the final round! It has never happened before at TPS, and Emilee, Eytan and IF all got byes to the SemiFinals and shared the $80 booty in a jam-packed exciting night of slam poetry.
Let's go back a bit. The open mic had 13 performers hungry for 4 spots, so alas there were some voices we didn't hear. But the voices we did hear...wow. Banoo Zan gave us taste of her lyric verse, while Jeff rocked his satirical approach to a woman. Sunil gave us his rendition of some sweet poetry.
The slam was a mix of vets and newbies, with some of the skilled performers such as Eytan and IF joining the likes of Noah, Emilee, Dreama, Anna and more. We even had a Tanya showing but alas she didn't make it to the second round.
It was great to see some positive vibes from poets such as Iyah and Dreama, and that seemed to be the theme of the night. Emilee told us about the value of seeing romance in the small, Noah told poignant stories about chance encounters, and Ali delivered a heart-wrenching poem about revolutions in Iran (but alas suffered a serious time penalty).
Third round saw IF Em and Eytan battle it out, and lo and behold! they all got 29.4 scores! Insane! So looks like that ice has been broken, question is, will we see other ties in the future (please, not for Semifinals, it would make things so difficult).
Our feature was Chris Tse, newly arrived to Toronto and he got everyone laughing and snappin fingers for some of his most memorable poetry. Definitely a stage force, Chris won over many fans, since we noticed several people approach him to sign their chapbook.
That was the last slam of the regular season, folks, so it's our SemiFinals next on March 31 at the Drake. $5. But don't come late, cuz we get to capacity by 730pm these days.
