You CAN Be A Poetry Slam Judge

This is a tradition followed by every slam in the world, and one of the things that makes poetry slam so unique: members of the audience get to participate by scoring the poets. You are qualified to judge poetry! You know what you like and don’t like. If you still don’t think you’re qualified, then just do it so we can get the show on the road. The less interested you are in judging, the better judge you will be. We can’t have a poetry slam without judges. Here are some guidelines just in case you want to do the hardest job in poetry slam.

Guidelines for Poetry Slam Judges

We thank you for serving as a judge for Houston Poetry Slam events. Judges are a vital part of every slam. Your decision will play a part in ultimately determining which poets will represent Houston at the National Poetry Slam.

You will be judging each poet for best originality, content, and performance using a scale of 0.0 (the worst poem ever written and performed) to 10.0 (the greatest poem ever written and flawlessly performed) While you are free to determine your own method of scoring poets, remember that you’re looking for three things: the best originality, the best content, the best performance. We suggest you give poets with the best originality up to 3 points, the best content up to 3 points, the best performance up to 3 points, which when added together equals 9. And then you could add a 1 to make a 10 for a poet that really impresses you.

Remember to use decimal points to avoid ties, and to raise your scores high at the count of three all at the same time.

Above all remain consistent and beware of score creep: that is, don’t let your score creep up higher for any reason other than the three criteria (originality, content, performance). At the end of each bout I will announce the winners. Once again thank you for being a judge.