The Performance Poetry Preservation Project.
The Poetry Slam movement is a vital, dynamic and energizing
development in contemporary American culture, and has served to showcase
and encourage numerous underrepresented voices in poetry. However, the
spontaneous and grass-roots nature of the movement means that these
critical live performances are not being adequately collected or
archived. Without a concerted effort, much of the legacy of the modern
performance poetry movement will soon be lost forever.
The Performance Poetry Preservation Project (P4) was created with
an eye towards preserving the Poetry Slam movement’s history, as well as
educating and supporting the slam community about how to record and
properly archive ongoing events. The main focus of P4 will be preserving
these digital audio and video recordings of slam poets and poetry slam
events. However, in addition to these recordings, the P4 will collect
and preserve the extensive paper archives of the Poetry Slam movement,
such as chapbooks, fliers, posters, programs, organizational records and
newsletters.
Easier to preserve analog recording technology is quickly becoming a
thing of the past, and has largely been abandoned by both the poets and
academia. Digital recordings have become the inevitable standard, but
many poets and venues have not yet made the transition to this new
technology. And indeed, these new recordings pose special challenges in
their preservation that no individuals or venues are prepared to meet.
Without technical assistance and a comprehensive preservation
infrastructure, we are destined to lose most of the recorded history of
this important social, political, and artistic movement.
P4 aims to provide a reliable methodology to both capture and preserve the slam poetry legacy for future generations.
For more information, visit The Performance Poetry Preservation Project Website.