Meaghan Tardif-Bennett sat anxiously waiting for her turn on stage. She was dressed in black and white, with pink nail polish, pink lipstick, and a pink handbag.  

“I was really stressed, and was very conscious of the impression I would make on the audience,” she says. “But I also wanted to feel as comfortable as possible in my skin. I was saving this bag for the spring, but it was pink and I really like it, so tonight I thought ‘fuck it, I’m using it.'”

Tardif-Bennett, a 20-year-old studio arts graduate from Champlain College, was taking part in a poetry slam organized by the Throw Poetry Collective at the Divan Orange. The event ran according to standard slam rules: judges were randomly selected amongst the attendees, and cut their evaluative teeth on a “sacrificial poet” in order to standardize the scoring and diffuse the worries that performers might have about going first. Poets then had three minutes on stage, with a good-natured heckle from the crowd and points deducted if they went over or under the allotted time.  

The poem Tardif-Bennett performed dealt with her coming of age.  

“My stuff is very personal. I’m applying for university now, and I wrote about what I wanted this part of my life to be like when I was younger, and coming to terms with what it’s like now,” she says. After her piece, she sat back in her seat, with only her bright smile betraying her quiet giddiness. The judges gave her high scores, and she moved on to the second round. 

Although the slam pits poets against one another in a public arena, there is very little ill-will between the participants.  

“After I slammed here, I loved it,” says Deanna Smith, a leading member of collective and the evening’s emcee.  “It’s very open and welcoming.  Even though it’s supposed to be competitive, there’s nothing negative about it.”

The remainder of the evening was filled with performances running the gamut from surprisingly funny to jarringly emotional. A young man comically rhapsodized about his relationship with coffee, eliciting peals of laughter from the audience. He was followed by a bearded man who chided the audience for their latent support of America (by virtue of living in Canada), and called the attack on the World Trade Center an instance of “post-modern war.” Tardif-Bennett, who had been unaware of a second round before that evening, performed a poem about her younger sister with little practice. It lasted over four minutes, and she was heavily penalized, coming last in the round. 

Despite the time mishap, Tardif-Bennett was beaming. “I’d do it again, hands down. As an artist, you’ve got this constant juice, this energy running through you. It’s like a waterfall. After you perform though, there’s this calm,” she explains, and enthusiastically expressed her plans to return in two weeks’ time. “This is a community I want to be a part of.”

The next open mic slam at Le Divan Orange is March 25. For more information, visit the Throw Poetry Collective at www.throwcollective.com.