Def Poetry slams it simply

At the Def Poetry Slam Showcase Wednesday night, artists Tommy Bottoms, Dana Gilmore and Malik Salaam regaled a crowd of more than 100 people at the Indiana Memorial Union's Alumni Room.\nFor two hours, the three poets rotated in this order until each had performed three times with the microphone.\nTwo local Hip Hop Awareness Week Slam winners -- Pablo Airaldi and Joe Kerschbaum -- opened for the poets. \nEach of the showcased poets, Bottoms, Gilmore and Salaam, performed pieces that were primarily opinion-based about political issues they had either dealt with personally or felt deeply enough to write about. Their pieces were light on imagery or complex language, relying more on simply conveyed messages.\nThis style of spoken word aimed at simplicity is often more likely to receive standing ovations from mass audiences. Since Hip Hop Congress sponsored this event with Union Board, it is not surprising that the featured poets would teeter closer to hip-hop than slam in style.\nBottoms' style was the loosest of the three, in that he had a tendency to slur his words and used more expletives in his work than the other two poets. His pieces, heavy in opinion, tended to begin at point A and end at point B rather than moving in a circle or re-instating a common theme. The first piece he did was rather flat in performance, but after he loosened up to the crowd he performed a piece called "Pimpin' Ain't Easy," which presented a very interesting opinion on organized religion.\nWhen Gilmore stepped onto the stage afterward, the audience probably noticed she was small in stature. But she projected her voice just as well as, and maybe better than, the other two performers. As the second showcased poet, she enunciated her words effectively and used the volume in her speech to create a varied effect in her work. Her most memorable piece was about a 16-year-old mother and drug addict whom she apparently knew personally. For this piece she appeared to draw most closely from her experiences and for this reason this performance was especially captivating.\nSalaam, the third poet, had the most literary-leaning style of any of the poets, with the most imagery.\nHis performance was effortlessly fluid and relied less heavily on opinion, though it was still a major driving force in his chosen subject matter. He projected his pieces effectively and did not pause very often once he began. However, sometimes he stepped away from the microphone or walked into the isles and the difference in sound jarred the mood. His most memorable piece was a poem he wrote about his wife, in which he described the reality of love.\nAll three poets had an off-the-cuff, spontaneous, but not necessarily sloppy feel to their performances. \nThe event ended with about three-quarters of the people in the audience giving the poets a standing ovation.