Salam poetry began its conquest in Hungary in 2006, and in recent years, the profession has trained many well-known artists, including Bens Barani, who took first place in the first slam competition in his life, when he had no idea about the genre. . Pence’s texts move at the crossroads of humor and poetry, interspersed with language games. In the interview, we talked to him about what the insider slam is like, where the career is headed, and how he sees diluting the Hungarian language.
Salam’s poetry seems like a mystical world to those who haven’t begun. How did you find this form of expression?
I lived in Gyr for twenty years, taking acting lessons since I was a teenager, and after a while became a studio student at Gyr National Theatre. Then I moved to Pest, where I felt I needed some sort of intermediate performance here as well. At that time, I still enjoyed the stage and applause the most, it has now changed, focus more on work and on making the stage performance sound the way I dream.
Although saying something was always important, in the beginning my performance was centered around the show, I enjoyed taking my adrenaline with me, I couldn’t get too self-conscious on stage but wasn’t confused. Now it’s more about the art of telling the audience something. Something important to me, by passing the high enough stimulation threshold now.
But how did you experience the four slams? It does not automatically follow from the stage.
Hugee (Katalin Mavrák), Saiid (Sark Márk) and Indiana (Tamás Gábor), of whom only Said has been active since, went to every place in the country where slam events were held, everything started to rise at that time. There was one slam night at Mosonmagyaróvár, one of my classmates told me that there would be an event where rhyming things would usually be written. Obviously this was not accurate, but it was enough for me that year because I did exactly that at home, that is, I wrote it. I won the race, and that’s one thing, but most importantly, I enjoyed it terribly.
So he became the first in the first poetic tournament in his life. How did you prepare for the lecture without previous experience?
You’ve read a short Wikipedia article or looked at one or two slams that got the most views, but that’s it. So I came with a fairly moderate knowledge, so to speak. I acted according to what I thought in the genre, I just added what I think of. Fortunately, I was soon able to realize that this was the best way to do it, because in each case the focus is on the presenter – what set of tools to use is really a personal decision. So I took myself. With one of my buddies, who was also racing for the first time, we shared first place in a points match. The jury does not want to decide. With the Saiid-Hugee-Indiana trio, we also had enough after the race. And this team was very lucky because Peter Muller Siamese was only looking for a team for the national team championship Slam. My friend and I were invited to go to Pest with them. Well, that’s how it happened.
What was more different from a knockout than performing on stage?
By that time, I was used to being in front of people, but slam gave me a virgin experience, a completely different situation than standing on stage with a character. And if it’s a studio, we’ve been holding slam events in Gyor since 2014, where theatrical faces from Gyor sometimes perform as well. Once upon a time, one of the artists I particularly respected came to perform. It was interesting to see how excited he was to present himself on stage by not being able to “hide” behind a character. He even said he was suddenly embarrassed. I think this is an honest example of how slam is a completely different kind of act for the audience, where one stands out to the audience with one’s own script and feelings.
Where did the desire to introduce this genre come from in Gyor?
I come home to Gyor a lot. It has appeared that there are more and more places in the country to criticize hair clubs, but it has not yet arrived. The mood of each event was so good that we wanted to get rid of that feeling. We wanted to host the first event on a seat for seventy people, but so many tickets were booked on the first day that we had to move to a larger space, so they were our first eighty. I also say these numbers because, in terms of audience, we were initially quantity oriented, now we’d rather have a smaller but more active community. This is what we want to strengthen in Gyor so that the medium breathes together more.
Isn’t that a bit controversial? There is a genre that can be communicated without censorship, but if the audience is narrowed down to a community, the performers talk to the same people, so the message remains inside the bubble.
Obviously, it’s great when a lot of people come in, but it’s important to have a solid core that gives the vase community and its cohesive strength. I think this kind of movie is still alive by a wider audience, but the spirit of the community is kept in motion with a strong core. Both are equally important, because it is a subculture, and as with any subculture, it also seems that its popularity begins to grow, but when it reaches its peak, its popularity declines and stagnation occurs.
Where does the hair of the slam go in this way?
Perhaps the 2016-2017 season could have been the pinnacle of the Slams on our soil. Now he prefers stagnation, and in this case there are two ways to do it: either they are lost or they have to be replenished. Now we are there to renew. We have established that there are indeed slam clubs everywhere, and it is a widespread type. But it often happens, and I can tell based on audience feedback that the attackers can’t help but grumble and stand on stage and weep over their words using cliches.
I didn’t want to talk about this in an interview for a long time, but there were a lot of stereotypes held by the purists that had a basis in reality. Undoubtedly, many similar scripts and contestants appeared, trying to achieve success with the same cheap phrases. Emerging trends can be learned by those who wish to write and build on these well-established elements. A refreshing counterexample is the recent National Slam Poetry pre-selection, where there was plenty of good script. In this way, Covid may have been working so well because people had time to find their own voice, so they came up with more unique scripts. I hope now that more unique texts will become a trend.
Before the interview, I asked in the nails of my acquaintances what they think of slam poetry. Most of the negative criticism was, exactly as I quote, that confusion, that is, often embarrassing.
I don’t want to pretend I don’t understand what they mean. During one public nomination evening, shy wing testers and those who had been in it for years found their own voice and had writings that might be worth publishing. The public must be accepted and treated in a normal way.
It could easily be that anyone still hovering on stage when they lose their virginity at a slam wins the evening twice later.
Anyone who does not fit with the uncertainty about the free entry system for club members can opt for many other shows where invited and experienced faces take the stage. In any case, there are more and more examples of performers coming together to create something beyond narrating a three-minute text in a club, and these can also be templates for renewing the aforementioned genre. That’s why we started giving lectures at Trafó. The first, even with us, was connecting the three-minute strings to a logical chain. Our second performance was actually directed by Mark Nagy. I’m a co-founder and owner of an art-inspired brand that has a YouTube channel with two videos so far; One is A Poem by Everyone, a Valentine’s Day love poem of light music and fantasy series, and the other is “What the Poet Thought”.
This particular business is hiding a brand, however, as far as I know, it does not know the partner it was founded with. How did they find each other?
We have linked up with my friend Samer Kimiani, writer and poet. One day my phone rang, Peter Chaney called me if he wanted to create a brand inspired by literature, which at the time meant series or pictures of Hungarian authors dressed in clothes. The focal point was that I was about to refer to T-shirts as movies. By that time, I was already working as a freelance graphic designer. Peter came home from London, we teamed up, set off and it looks like we’ve made it. A lot has changed since we have now moved to international calligraphy and all arts.
In September, he performed with several others at the Brain Bar Future Festival, where they discussed whether the Hungarian language could become extinct. Do you think ringing English words is a problem?
Perhaps in this interview I also used a combination of English words, where the word cringe appeared before two questions. If someone says he “broken the stream because his device malfunctioned due to something in the software”, I think it’s a Hungarian sentence in many ways. These words were ingrained in everyday life. We go anywhere if we listen to it our environment Conversations, these words just fly.
Brain Baron has had relatively little time to expand on these questions, as the function of the conference is not to provide answers, but to ask relevant questions and give an update to the people there. Thus, those who yearn for innovative and forward-looking things see who are the key players on the board and who are the key players. I think it is quite natural to use and translate more and more English words, I would like to know that in three hundred years, if someone reads a recent written text, it will be like Blasey’s poem to us or the ancient Hungarian mourning for Mary? I find this change immeasurably exciting.
A feature of the Hungarian language is that we can describe many expressions with different words. The Slams are a good example of this. Can those who like to immerse themselves as students of this genre encourage them to express themselves as creatively as possible?
Don’t overdo it, I think it’s far from making that much of an impact. On the other hand, its aesthetic elements can be put to good use in other groups, such as TikTok under the name Vates, to amuse and tire ourselves and our followers through rhymes and systematic theses words. Rhyme works most of the time, as it is useful to the ear.
If rhymes fall so well on the ear, why is the number of people reading poems decreasing?
I’m not sure I’m the best person to answer that, but I’m happy with the shoot. On the other hand, a contemporary poem is rarely mentioned on a page with it rhyming, although I don’t think that would be an influential factor. Perhaps it is because of their stigmatization that whoever reads a poem can only be a “kind of” person. Or just because it’s long, abstract, and unexplainable by most people, especially since the average attention time is getting shorter. Basically, reading should be a leisure activity, but many no longer have the strength at the end of the day, preferring to brainstorm rather than decipher and understand ideas.
Do they think empty entertainment is the future?
I think a lot of people just for fun think we’re laughing. Whereas if our deep thoughts become endless stagnant water, then once he stirs the mud with something, I think it’s fun too. After all, it also builds a person and learns new things about himself. If we can think of entertainment as not simply savoring 100 percent positive emotions, then any performance can be enjoyable in which both the presenter and the message are valid. That could be two criteria for a good final tournament anyway. Whatever you stand for, if you write that you don’t act like yourself and think that you don’t have to show yourself more than you really are, you’ll definitely be outwardly sexy.
(Cover image: Pence Barani. Photo: Tamás Kaszás/Index)
