On Tuesday, September 4, we will begin Season Two of the Nitty Gritty Slam, Albany’s only poetry slam series. Believe it or not, it was a year ago that Albany Poets, UGT, and Frequncy North got together and decided to host this great new event for poets and spoken word artists on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of each month at Valentine’s. In our first year we were able to send the very first slam team from Albany to the National Poetry Slam and in Season Two we will be making more firsts happen. In the coming months we will be sending poets to the IWPS in October and the Women of the World Poetry Slam in the spring. And we will be putting together another fantastic team to battle the best in the world at the 2013 National Poetry Slam in Boston, MA.

We are very happy to announce that Season Two of the Nitty Gritty Slam will be expanding to the 5th Tuesdays of the month, giving the area’s slam poets even more opportunity to shine.

During our first year we took notes and made some changes to the schedule for Season Two. We are implementing new tournament and point systems to make the team selection even easier. This will also allow us to have a team in place in May rather than finalizing the team in late-June.

During Season Two you will be seeing some dynamic featured poets sharing the stage with Albany’s best and brightest along with theme nights that will bring the entire local poetry community together.

Here is the schedule and a little explanation of some new terms…

9/4/2012 – NGS #25 – Open Slam 1.1

9/18/2012 – NGS #26 – Open Slam 1.2

10/2/2012 – NGS #27 – Open Slam 1.3

10/16/2012 – NGS #28 – Open Slam 1.4

10/30/2012 – NGS #29 – Special Slam: Inappropriate Slam

11/6/2012 – NGS #30 – Semi Final 1

11/20/2012 – NGS #31 – WOWps Prelim 1

12/4/2012 – NGS #32 – Open Slam 2.1

12/18/2012 – NGS #33 – WOWps Prelim 2

1/1/2013 – NGS #34 – Open Slam 2.2

1/15/2013 – NGS #35 – WOWps Prelim 3

1/29/2013 – NGS #36 – Special Slam: Haiku Death Match

2/5/2013 – NGS #37 – Open Slam 2.3

2/19/2013 – NGS #38 – WOWps Final

3/5/2013 – NGS #39 – Special Slam: Dead Poet Slam

3/19/2013 – NGS #40 – Open Slam 2.4

4/2/2013 – NGS #41 – Semi Final 2

4/16/2013 – NGS #42 – Special Slam: Word Fest Invitational

4/30/2013 – NGS #43 – Wild Card Slam

5/7/2013 – NGS #44 – Grand Slam

5/21/2013 – NGS #45 – Old School Slam

6/4/2013 – NGS #46 – Old School Slam

6/18/2013 – NGS #47 – Old School Slam

7/2/2013 – NGS #48 – Old School Slam

7/16/2013 – NGS #49 – Old School Slam

7/30/2013 – NGS #50 – Special Slam: National Poetry Slam Send-off Party

8/6/2013 – NGS #51 – Old School Slam

8/20/2013 – NGS #52 – Season Two Night of Champions

Open Slams are our traditional “8-4-2” slams that are open to all poets who wish to sign up. Three rounds with 8 poets in the first round, top four scores in the second round, aand top two moving on the round three. The winners get cash prizes and points which go towards the Semi Finals.

The point system works like this: 1st place = 5pts, 2nd = 4pts, 3rd = 3pts, 4 = 2pts, 5-8 (all poets that do not advance to Round Two) = 1pt.

Semi Finals will take the top 8 point leaders from the previous Open Slams to compete.

Wild Card is the last chance for people to into the Grand Slam.

Grand Slam will take the top three poets from the two semi finals and top two poets from the Wild Card slam with the top four becoming the team.

WOWps Prelims are to find who will represent NGS at the Women of the World Poetry Slam. These slams will follow a special timing / round format that the WOWps uses.

Dead Poet Slam is a rare chance to perform someone else’s poetry…as long as the poet is dead, of course.

WOWps Final will take the top two poets from the three prelims to find the one poet to represent NGS at WOWps in March 2013.

Night of Champions will be all of the 1st place winners from all of the slams for the season in one battle to be the Season Two Champ.

Old School Slams are “8-4-2” slams where the winner does get cash prizes, but the points are not counted towards the tournaments or team selection process.

NGS takes place at Valentine’s (17 New Scotland Ave.) on the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Tuesday’s of each month. If you’re not into slam, but want to get on stage and share your work, we have an open mic before the slam. Sign up begins at 7PM, open mic starts at 7:30, and the slam starts at 8PM. Admission is $5.00 ($3.00 with student ID). This is an 18+ show.

If you are not able to make it out to Valentine’s when NGS is happening, don’t worry, we will bring the slam to you, because we will be broadcasting the shows live on our websites and on YouTube.

To follow along with all of the action be sure to connect with Nitty Gritty Slam on Facebook and Twitter.