Slamming ahead

>> Michelle Dabrowski leads the poetry
charge with the Throw Collective

UPWARDLY MOBILE GIRLFRIEND: Dabrowski

by VINCENT TINGUELY

Michelle Dabrowski first caught the slam poetry bug in a high school English class, and it wasn’t long before she’d crossed the pond and started learning the trade at the Farrago poetry slam series in Covent Garden. “It wasn’t just slam poets,” says Dabrowski. “It was also rappers, vocalists, any kinds of wordsmiths—this was an outlet for them to practise and really explore the dynamic of what they’re doing for the audience and how it is affecting them.”

While she appreciated the warm solidarity of the London scene, Dabrowski was searching for something with more of an edge. “I didn’t find I was being challenged or pushed by the other performers,” Dabrowski explains. “In New York and Toronto, especially with the whole movement that’s been happening in Canada, I found all of those events to be a little bit more competitive and serious. People are really bringing it and really serious about what they’re doing.” Now Dabrowski, along with other members of the Throw Collective (made up of performance poets, beat boxers, rappers, vocalists, musicians and storytellers), are bringing it by launching a slam series in Montreal with the aim of sending a team to the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in October 2008.

Dabrowski sees the slam as an opportunity for networking and honing of skills. “Although there’s an element of competition, the point is the poetry,” says Dabrowski. “The point is to bring together a diversity of people.” The Throw Collective came into being for the same reason—as well as organizing the slam, the collective plans to hold monthly jams of musicians and wordsmiths, creating content for a podcast that Dabrowski’s been producing for a couple of years.

She’s also got plans for a first, self-produced CD, Upward Praising Girlfriend, featuring longer and more complex pieces than what she performs for slams. “Every artist who is a practised slammer got fed up with writing for a stopwatch, just like I did,” says Dabrowski. “I’m wary not to create a closed-off community, or a ‘one way to do it’ sort of spoken word poetry. My work does not fall into the slam structure that well—I tend to write really long pieces. For the CD, some pieces will have musical accompaniment, some will just be raw voice.”

The first Throw Collective slam takes place at le Cagibi (5490 St-Laurent), Saturday, Jan. 19. Sign-up for the first round is at 7:30 p.m.