The Berkeley Poetry Slam

The Berkeley Poetry Slam has been a vibrant and necessary part of the Bay Area arts scene since its inception 25 years ago. Founded by Ekabumi Charles Ellick in 1998, it has filled Berkeley’s iconic Irish Pub, The Starry Plough, with slam’s energetic and often irreverent style of competitive performance poetry each and every wednesday ever since. In that time BPS has become a staple of the Bay Area literary arts scene as well as the national spoken word poetry movement. Over the years, the slam has nurtured countless voices, from youth poets, to slam champions to Tony Award winners, and has become a beloved community space for poetry and performance whose influence can be felt far beyond the Bay Area, as it has helped to shape the national poetry slam movement becoming one of the premiere slam stages in the US.