Slam poetry is its own animal. It’s a frenzied, chaotic staccato that feels like a train going off the rails, only to have the conductor bring it to a stop right before it all goes out of control.
A slam poet needs a natural sense of rhythm and cadence to take the words off the page and deliver them to our hearts. It’s a talent many attempt to mimic, but real slam poets, the ones whose spoken word takes control of you while they’re performing, are few and far between.
La Porte High School student, Taylor Jump, is a slam poet.
Slam poetry, to Jump, is the beautiful convergence of two of her biggest passions in life: writing and the stage.
“My first passion is theatre,” Jump told IIMM. “That's why I love slamming my poems so much. It's just another performance.”
This theatrical passion shines through in Jump’s work, almost as if the poems themselves are condensed plays; short gamma ray bursts of raw emotion and feeling that are too powerful to last more than a moment.
These raw, powerful moments Jump performs are fueled by the moments Jump feels, the ones that can never be created by thought, but only felt in the heart. .
“I had actually been experiencing writers block for the last couple months,” Jump said, describing the moment that happened when she created her latest piece, ‘Artificial Love’. “I just had no inspiration for raw, emotional poetry. Then it just hit one night and I knew I had to write it down.”
When that moment hits you, you can let it pass, or you can capture it and use it to create something special, Jump, the slam poet, thankfully does the latter.
Watch ‘Artificial Love’ below: