FOURTH ANNUAL OREGON COAST

INSTANT HAIKU SLAM CLASSIC

Attention all brave and exhibitionistic poets on the Oregon coast! In celebration of National Poetry Month, the Nye Beach Writers' Series invites performance poets and curious spectators to the Fourth Annual Oregon Coast Instant Haiku Slam Classic.

The event, sponsored by Writers On The Edge, takes place Saturday, April 18, at 7:00 p.m., at Cafe Mundo, a full-service, natural foods restaurant located at the corner of Southwest Coast Street and Second Place in the historic Nye Beach area of Newport. Admission is free to all participants and spectators. Matt Love, director of Writers On The Edge, will host the event. Many prizes will be awarded.

The popular Haiku Slam Classic is a four-team poetry competition, scored by the audience in a format similar to a diving event where judges hold up numerical scores. All poets are randomly grouped into teams, which may have three or four members depending on the number of people who sign up.

Traditionally, haikus are un-rhymed, 17-syllable, three-line poems (5-7-5 structure). The Oregon Coast Instant Haiku Slam Classic format retains this 5-7-5 structure, but competition haikus can rhyme. Poets can also expect to write upon a wide variety of subjects, presented to them on the spot by the hosts.

After teams are formed, they compete against each other. The host throws out a word or phrase, such as "beach" or "bailout" or "hope," and each member from each team composes a haiku relating to that word or phrase. After the one-minute thinking/writing time is up, the poets recite their haikus and the judges score them on a scale of 1 to 10. The teams continue competing until the team with the highest total wins the final round and thus, poetic glory.

Prizes will be awarded to the first- and second-place teams. Even if a person does not want to participate in the competition, three volunteer judges are needed for each round. Judges will be selected from the audience.