Slam Poetry and the Politics of Template

As a performance-oriented version of the poetic output, slam poetry selectively claims to bring out everyone’s voices. This becomes a question of debate when poetry becomes increasingly commercialized. The issue regarding commercialization is how it enforces a template, thereby denying room for speaking the truth. How performers of poetry slams infuse populist arguments into their performances becomes relevant. While representations of poetry are accepted only if they fit into a specific template, the identification of the host and the performer with the populist ideology is observed. Questioning the blatant contradiction of its claim of bringing out the marginal voices is the core concern of this short article.