Albuquerque poet finds rhyme and reason to start a new poetry slam
Mar. 15—Zachary Kluckman came of age in the wake of the biggest poetry event in New Mexico history. So it's no wonder he wants to build on top of its legacy.
Kluckman, the founder of the Chicharra Poetry Slam Festival, says he didn't know Albuquerque hosted the 2005 National Poetry Slam until after it had occurred. The ensuing fervor drew him into poetry, and he later would go on to represent Albuquerque and become a national semifinalist at Poetry Slam.
Now, with Chicharra, he hopes his inaugural event will harness the power of poetry and inspire performance poets in his hometown.
"There are great and thriving poetry communities throughout the state," he says. "But I guess we've never taken that swing to do a full-scale festival.
"This is a way to kind of go to that next step and build. We have such a rich culture of poetry and art here in New Mexico, and it just makes no sense to me that we don't have a big poetry event every year."
Kluckman's vision for such a festival — named for the Spanish word for the cicada, a noisy insect — will become a reality March 21-23 at venues throughout Albuquerque.
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Chicharra Poetry Slam Festival
Times vary; festival runs March 21-23. The final is 7 p.m. March 23 at Hiland Theater, 4800 Central Avenue, Albuquerque.
Tickets for the finals are $15.
Noted New Mexico performance poet GiGi Bella will host the finals stage on March 23 at Hiland Theater. Dozens of poets from across the country will compete at Chicharra, and Kluckman says the event includes five from Albuquerque as well as a team — Word Weavers — from Northern New Mexico.
Many of the local poets, he says, are helping out at Chicharra, including Bella, who Kluckman says he's known since they were both teenagers learning to put words together. Kluckman won't be competing but says he understands what the mindset is like for the competing poets.
"They've written these poems, and they've spent endless hours practicing them and figuring out the performance," he says. "They've been thinking about how to deliver these poems in a way that is most impactful to their audience. And in the team pieces, you have an added element where many of them will do collaborative group pieces. You'll see pieces where you have two, three, or four members performing simultaneously, and it's really choreographed and polished work. I guess you could say these are the rock stars of the poetry world."
Turn of events
Chicharra will include an array of events in addition to the competitive rounds.
A Trans & Non-Binary Open Mic is scheduled for Thursday, March 21, at Albuquerque's Main Library, and several side events will take place at Quirky Used Books & More and Ancora Cafe & Bakery, both near Central Avenue and Nob Hill, the following Friday and Saturday morning.
Bella, a two-time member of the Albuquerque Poetry Slam Team, will perform her one-woman show, Big Feelings, at 11 p.m. on Thursday, March 21, at Albuquerque's Z Lounge. Big Feelings began as a book and evolved into a performance during which Bella is playing her original music with a live band. Bella says the show includes 11 costume changes (she designed all her costumes), and she'll perform it at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival later this summer.
She began her career performing at poetry slams as a youngster, but she says it was intimidating at first to try reciting her own work in public.
"For a long time, I would just show up to slams and write in my notebook and keep it to myself. Then that evolved to me reading at open mics," she says. "Eventually, an organizer named Ken Rodriguez, who did really amazing work for the community, looked at me and said, 'Hey, you should compete. You really are very good, and you should give it a shot and see what happens.' I was terrified. I was shaking like a leaf. But it was super fun, and I really enjoyed it — and came in third place in my first outing. We used to get prizes donated by Hastings Books, and I got a used book, and I'll never forget it. It changed my life."
Setting the stage
So what's it like to attend the poetry slam?
Chicharra includes three rounds of competition, and the group of poets will be whittled down into smaller numbers leading up to the finals. The poets recite prepared material and choose a different work if they advance.
But the competitors don't aim their words at each other like a rap battle.
"In Poetry Slam, you're not really going to get diss poems," Kluckman says. "You're not going to get poets going after each other personally in an aggressive way. We like to say that we're competing together and not competing against each other. ... It's more about the love of the art, and each poet is trying to shine the way they shine individually."
Josh and Cylie Naylor, a husband-and-wife team who run the Ghost Poetry Show in Phoenix, will send a pair of travel teams to compete at Chicharra.
The couple started going to poetry slams as a date night activity in 2019, but after the pandemic forced a wave of cancellations, they created their own regular poetry night in Phoenix in 2021. Their first event was at a 35-seat movie theater, and it sold out for their first three events.
The Naylors kept at it, and Ghost Poetry Show now runs twice a month in Phoenix and sends teams to competitions all over the country.
"It's a pretty cool experience to be able to cultivate that environment of people who have found their chosen form of expression," says Cylie Naylor. "We see all levels of experience; some people want to take the competitive aspect and get fueled by that energy, and others are there to experience like-minded people. It serves a purpose for everyone."
Kluckman hopes Chicharra will build into a bigger event over time, adding that he named his festival for the sonorous winged insect because he always heard them chirping away as he drifted off to sleep.
He hopes the festival will inspire young poets in much the same way that poetry slam has changed his and Bella's lives.
Kluckman says that after Albuquerque hosted the national poetry slam, the local community was active for a brief window of time: Open mic nights required lotteries to see who would perform that night. Kluckman wants to see that level of enthusiasm again, starting with one young poet at a time.
"Poetry gives people a chance to express themselves and be heard and be seen in a way that is hard to find in other avenues. And Poetry Slam takes it to the next level," he says. "Big events like this give you a whole community of people to engage with. One of my favorite things is watching poets come in from Seattle, and they see a poet from Maryland and they're over there hugging and hanging out and talking. They've probably seen each other maybe once or twice in the last couple years. It's a family reunion atmosphere."
