Southwest Shootout 2015

Every two years, the Southwest Shootout Regional Poetry Slam swings through Albuquerque. Sometimes it goes to Houston; sometimes to Flagstaff; sometimes to Dallas or Austin. 2016: Denver.

I’ve worked on a few of them, sometimes contributing design, or bout managing. This year it’s my privilege to take photographs for it. Being it’s in my front yard, and all.

Night One / Preliminaries

Finals

I have to say it was disappointing (as it far too frequently is) to see so few women on the individual finals stage. That may have had to do with scores; maybe the $25 buy-in. But those sound like essentially the same problem to me.

Slam doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and Burque judges aren’t immune to systemic sexist bias. Still, after the Women of the World Poetry Slam blew up here in March, I had higher hopes. The struggle struggles on.