A poetry slam is a competitive art event in which poets perform spoken word poetry before a live audience and a panel of judges. While formats can vary, slams are often loud and lively, with audience participation, cheering and dramatic delivery.
Carl August Sandburg was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as "a major figure in contemporary literature", especially for volumes of his collected verse, including Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), and Smoke and Steel (1920). He enjoyed "unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life". When he died in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that "Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America."
Richard Purdy Wilbur was an American poet and literary translator. One of the foremost poets, along with his friend Anthony Hecht, of the World War II generation, Wilbur's work, often employing rhyme, and composed primarily in traditional forms, was marked by its wit, charm, and gentlemanly elegance. He was acclaimed in his youth as the heir to Robert Frost, translated the verse dramas of Moliere, Corneille, and Racine into rhymed English, collaborated with Leonard Bernstein as the lyricist for the opera Candide, and in his old age acted, particularly through his role in the annual West Chester University Poetry Conference, as a mentor to the younger poets of the New Formalist movement. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987 and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice, in 1957 and 1989.
Simon Robert Armitage is an English poet, playwright, musician and novelist. He was appointed Poet Laureate on 10 May 2019. He is professor of poetry at the University of Leeds.
Carl Rakosi was the last surviving member of the Objectivist poets, still publishing and performing poetry well into his 90s.
Clyde Austin Stubblefield was an American drummer best known for his work with James Brown, with whom he recorded and toured for six years (1965-70). His syncopated drum patterns on Brown's recordings are considered funk standards. Samples of his drum performances were heavily used in hip hop music beginning in the 1980s, although Stubblefield frequently received no credit.
Califone is an experimental rock band from Chicago. The band is named after Califone International, an audio equipment manufacturer. Their work has been critically acclaimed.
August Kleinzahler is an American poet.
Tim Rutili is an American musician, filmmaker, and visual artist. He is best known as the founder of Red Red Meat and Califone, and his membership in supergroups Ugly Casanova and Loftus.
Edward Field is an American poet and author of fiction and non-fiction, as well as anthologies and periodicals.
Joshua Marie Wilkinson is an American poet, editor, publisher, and filmmaker.
Terrance Hayes is an American poet and educator who has published seven poetry collections. His 2010 collection, Lighthead, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2010. In September 2014, he was one of 21 recipients of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, awarded to individuals who show outstanding creativity in their work.
Leonard Norman Cohen was a Canadian songwriter, singer, poet, and novelist. Themes commonly explored throughout his work include faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, social and political conflict, and sexual and romantic love, desire, regret, and loss. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. In 2011, he received one of the Prince of Asturias Awards for literature and the ninth Glenn Gould Prize. In 2023, Rolling Stone named Cohen the 103rd-greatest singer.
Tony Crunk is an American poet whose first volume of poetry, Living in the Resurrection, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition.
Rick Hilles is an American poet.
Trinidad Sanchez Jr. was a poet and activist who wrote about culture and social issues. He received several awards during his lifetime and was given the President's Peace Commission Art of Peace award posthumously in 2007.
Paul Zarzyski is a cowboy poet and educator. He is a former bareback bronc rider.
Marilyn L. Taylor is an American poet with six published collections of poems. Taylor's poems have also appeared in a number of anthologies and journals, including The American Scholar, Able Muse, Measure, Smartish Pace, The Formalist, and Poetry magazine's 90th Anniversary Anthology. Her second full-length collection, Subject to Change, was nominated for the Poets' Prize. She served as the city of Milwaukee's Poet Laureate in 2004 and 2005, and was appointed Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin for 2009 and 2010. She also served for five years as a contributing editor for The Writer Magazine. A retired adjunct assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, she taught poetry and poetics for the Department of English and later for the Honors College. She currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she presents readings and facilitates workshops throughout Wisconsin and beyond.
David Eggleton is a New Zealand poet, critic and writer. Eggleton has been awarded the Ockham New Zealand Book Award for poetry and in 2019 was appointed New Zealand Poet Laureate, a title he held until 2022. Eggleton's work has appeared in a multitude of publications in New Zealand and he has released over 18 poetry books (1986–2001) with a variety of publishers, including Penguin.
Kevin Coval is an American poet. Coval is a Chicago-based writer who is known for exploring topics such as race, hip-hop culture, Chicago history, and Jewish-American identity in his work. He is also known for his appearances in four seasons of the Peabody Award-winning television series Def Poetry Jam on HBO.
