Poet Pride

Please allow me a little bit of gratuitous celebrating and keyboard smashing.

AUGGGHHHH!!!! asdfdghjkl; wifjafoehja;hnfcasdcfhafh;adshfi;zdsho AHHHHHHHH!!!!!

*five minutes later*

Okay, now that that's out of my system, I shall begin.

Ever since I competed in my first poetry slam, I have desired to make it to Round 3. For those of you who don't know the structure of poetry competitions, there is a pyramidal structure that is built by elimination. In Round 1, anyone and everyone can compete, but for Round 2, they have to cut it back a bit. Only six poets can advance to the second round and the rest are cut (Which can be anywhere from 6 to 10 poets being cut). Then, those six poets are cut down to 3 and this is what Round 3 is. Round 3 is The. Final. Round. There are only three poets and they take first, second, and third place.

I think almost every time I have competed, I have made it into round 2. Several times, I was close to making it to round three, but I was never quite good enough. I struggled and struggled. I molded and shaped my poetry, trying to make it better, and figure out the secret to getting into round 3. That's all I wanted. Just to be good enough to make it into the third round. I didn't even care about getting first. I could have gotten third place and been over the moon about having had a shot at it.

Guess. What. After all my trying. Writing and Re-writing, revising and tweaking. I FINALLY, made it into Round 3!! I was SO happy, I couldn't even express my joy.

For the first round, I performed a poem that I'd made up on the fly a few days previously.
The second round, I performed a poem called, "Astronaut's Eye View." Which, the title makes it sound a lot more wonderful and interesting than I felt it really was. I wrote it for a school assignment for my literature class and the subject topic was "books" and how they benefit teens. The poem turned out pretty good; My teacher loved it. And it got me into ROUND 3!!!!
For the third round, I revisited a poem I wrote a while ago. I actually performed it last month and I tried to do it from memory, but I completely bombed it, forgot all the words, and was eliminated from round two. (Definitely wasn't my day.) I decided to bring it back, so I could do the beautiful poem some justice.

And justice, I did it, because GUESS WHAT!!!

I TOOK FIRST PLACE.

Cue more keyboard-smashing and headdesk-banging. I was so thrilled, I was literally stunned speechless. There are no words to describe the euphoria (which has been kind of a theme for me lately.). I was so surprised, honored, and pleased all at the same time.

I wasn't even sure if I would get into the third round because the judging tends to be screwy and skewed and unpredictable, and there were a TON of noobs that night. (Which, the noobs tend to garner sympathy scores because they're first timers.) So the judging is hardly objective, and two of the other veteran poets basically dropped out the final round because they'd both gotten straight tens the whole night and were planning to do a sort of "face off." In the end, it worked out that I had the perfect combination of judges, noobs, and poetry, and I took first place. That's just how slammin' goes. But I am SO. PROUD!!! Words fail me.

It was the last TYPS night of the regular season. Next month, I'll be competing in the championship. I'll be eligible to compete in a few slams during the summer, but after that, my slamming career at TYPS will come to a close, and I will have to find a new forum for my poetry. I don't think I could have ended the regular season a better way.