Poetry Slam

One could say that this year’s 7 Hills Poetry Slam, which will represent Worcester at the National Poetry Slam Finals in August in Decatur, Georgia, was preordained. More precisely, after a truly spectacular case of Mercury in retrograde, four poets ended up slamming for four spots in the performance poetry competition.



Originally, eight poets — winners of slams held at the Sahara Restaurant and Bar for the past eight months — had been scheduled to read, but illness, sudden schedule conflicts and mysterious disappearances — quickly reduced that number to four. But, the show must go on, so after a stellar featured reading by Rochester, New York, poet Rachel McKibbens, host Jenith Charpentier carried on with the bout. And you know what? It was a pretty hot show. Despite the lack of dramatic tension, Worcester-area poets Robert Blackwell Gibbs, Malt Shlitzman, Ashley Wonder and Sarah Cosello delivered two rounds of solid poetry, with Gibbs pulling the night’s highest scores and being named the Grand Champion.

Fundraisers and team performances are still being scheduled.



'The Rare'



When Worcester filmmaker Curtis Kariuki had announced his Kickstarter to produce “The Rare,” a documentary exploring the lives and interactions of 20 young Worcester artists, you could have been forgiven for not getting your hopes up: Crowdfunding can be a fickle beast, and more than a few artists have been burned.

But Kariuki and company seem to have some real support: The documentary beat its $5,000 goal on the first day, and eventually raised $13,106 from 46 backers. According to a note on the Kickstarter page, the extra funds will be used “to step the film up a few notches! We're going to keep fundraising! Which means we will be able to make a theater quality film! We can submit the film to Netflix, Amazon, iTunes you name it!”



Production on the film has begun, according to the Kickstarter Page.



FreezePop



Speaking of crowdfunding, the Boston-area band FreezePop has launched a Kickstarter for its forthcoming album because, according to a video on its page, “I checked out bank account, and we are totally out of money … probably because we bought this gigantic, ludicrously expensive spaceship.” That’s a joke — the video is shot on a standing spaceship set — but what’s not a joke is when the band discusses the nearly $3 it raised from its music being streamed online. No, best for the band to take matters into its own hands.















But FreezePop is pretty popular as indie bands go, and its $30,000 goal was hit almost immediately, and with 22 days remaining on the Kickstarter, the band has raised $47,056. After seeing a lot of regional artists get their hopes dashed on Kickstarter’s craggy shores, it’s nice to see a few come through the process victorious.

Ghost of a Machine

Lastly, Worcester rapper Ghost of a Machine has another new music video out, but this one is more of a short film. Directed by Ralph Weah and Austin Raheem Pinilla, the film is called “DWB” — short for “Driving While Black” — and features Ghost’s song of the same name as well as the poem “Middle Passage Poem,” by the aforementioned Ashley Wonder.



The video — which can’t be embedded on Telegram.com because of language concerns but can be seen here — deals with racial profiling and police brutality, and is clearly informed by the rash of deaths that spurred the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Indeed, the video is dedicated to Samuel DuBose, a black Cincinnati man who was shot by a police officer during a traffic stop for a missing front license plate.

With that subject matter, it’s no surprise that “DBW” is a heck of a lot heavier and more intense than Ghost’s previous effort, “The Voynich Manuscript.” But it’s an ambitious project, and is deeply affecting.

Email Victor D. Infante at Victor.Infante@Telegram.com and follow Pop Culture Notebook on twitter @TGPopCulture.