Years ago, as a slam poet, I traveled and competed in various cities. Slam poetry is a live poetry competition, in which the poet stands on stage and delivers a poem to an audience (five of whom are picked randomly as judges) and then scored for their efforts. It sounds a bit cruel, but I’ll admit: I’m a Leo sun and I craved the attention. During my time as a slam poet, I observed a phenomenon I’ve since termed “points for pain,” in which there was a tendency to perform increasingly traumatic poems to earn higher scores. Although sharing poetry can be healing, this phenomenon was frequently strategic. I participated in conversations where competing poets pondered over which traumatic subjects would score the highest among that night’s selection of audience-members-turned-judges. This had become a competition for empathy.
