The Z Experience Poetry Slam on Monday saw a lot of changes from previous years, in introducing new hosts and a new competition format. But its commitments to making voices heard, diving deep into tough issues, and building community remained as central and strong as ever.
The year 2025 marked a turning point for the Z Experience Poetry Slam, formerly known as the Zannette Lewis Environmental and Social Justice Professional Poetry Slam. This marked its 29th year as part of the Peabody Museum’s celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s birthday. The slam was the brainchild of educator and community activist Zannette Lewis, but it “wouldn’t exist,” said poet Croilot Adames Semexant, without the collaboration of Lewis and poet and musician Ngoma Hill. Ngoma went on to host the slam for the next three decades. This year, Ngoma passed the hosting baton to Croilot, who had hosted the open mic portion of the event for several years.
This Monday’s slam began with an open mic hosted by New Haven poet laureate Sharmont “Influence” Little, in which any community member could take the mic to try out verses or just express their thoughts. The lineup for the open mic also turned out to be stacked with veteran poets of the Z Experience and the New Haven Scene — from poets Lyrical Faith, J Sun, and Tymani Rain to poet and Free 2 Spit open mic host Baub Bidon.
“Ladies and gentlemen, are we ready for a slam?” Croilot then asked, receiving an enthusiastic “yeah!” from the crowd. Ngoma warmed up the crowd with a valedictory performance, creating layered loops on the spot of samples, drones, flute, and violin that he then performed his poetry over. It clarified that the elder poet was handing over hosting duties at the top of his game.
With a change in host also came a change in format. In previous years, individual poets had competed against one another, passing though two elimination rounds, with the final round involving three poets going poem for poem to win first place. This year involved a competition among four slam poetry teams: Dream Free, from New York City; Pick Up the Pen, from Rhode Island; Team News, from Massachusetts; and Connecticut’s own Verbal Slap. Rather than going through elimination rounds, every team performed for three rounds, with the team with the highest cumulative score emerging victorious.
A slam often starts with a “sacrificial” poem to give the panel of judges a chance to warm up, and give the audience a sense of what their number scores might mean. This year, that poem was performed by Slamherst, a slam poetry team from UMASS Amherst, who broke out a team-performed piece about language and identity, and about how losing original languages didn’t have to mean losing a sense of cultural identity and origin. “My words are a battlefield, and they will fight back,” the poets exclaimed. “Even when our words are lost, they won’t go down without a fight.” The poets’ performance garnered them a near-perfect score of 29.8 from the judges. They had set the bar. As Croilot said, “anything that comes after better bring the heat.”
Pick Up the Pen performed first, with a sharp solo performance that began as a humorous account of teeth whitening. The process “will hurt,” the poet said, but “you will have a more acceptable smile.” It then turned on the question: “Have you ever had your mind whitened?” It expanded to consider the school system as a place that demanded conformity. “If you can’t get a graduation picture, a mug shot will do,” the poet said. “Drop that attitude for your protection,” and, now dripping with sarcasm, “don’t forget to smile.” 29.6.
“I am not a person. I am a product,” Dream Free’s representative began, then detailing the hopelessness of living in poverty on a minimum-wage job, going to therapy as if the problem lies within when it’s clear that at least part of the problem is societal: it’s “so much cheaper to let us die of infection than to pay for virus protection,” the poet said. How to explain to a relatively well-off therapist that “my back is full of bed sores when I work a job that she wouldn’t get out of bed for?… I am not a mental patient. I am an undervalued product in a capitalist nation.” The poet’s raw, emtional performance scored a 29.1.
Verbal Slap then did a four-person performance of a piece that used a recipe as a metaphor for social change: “Step 6: start a fire,” they said in unison. “The revolution will be televised in Hell’s Kitchen.” The poem was “food for thought,” and ended with the command to “nourish your soul, amen,” but it was the team’s finely tuned delivery that brought the message home. The team earned a near-perfect score of 29.9.
Team News followed that with a solo performance of a heartfelt ode to the house the poet’s parents bought. “My parents took a city cave and made a home,” the poet said, just as the kids “turned a graveyard into a playground.” The poem moved through history, in which the neighborhood struggled through hard times and improved itself. That turned out to be its undoing. “It’s been 20 years and my parents still own their house,” but “everyone we know has moved.” Now, when the poet visits, the neighborhood is safer, perhaps, and calmer, but they’d take the neighborhood of their youth over the current “flatline suburbs.”
“Even though murders have stopped on this block, there is still something dying here.”
The judges gave that poem a 29.7. It was a tight contest. “It’s getting hot in here,” Croilot said.
The second round found poets covering topics ranging from the erasure of undocumented immigrants, to the messy legacies of King and Malcolm X and the way White nationalism is on the unfettered rise while Black nationalism remains in check (“just for being in this room you’re all added to the list”). The poems continued by addressing the politics of hair, environmental catastrophe, and the high rates of incarceration among Black men and how they are traumatized by their prison time.
The scores stayed consistently high, keeping the race close, but another poem from Verbal Slap stood out, as what began as sounding like a boxing match ended up being male poets aggressively complimenting one another.
“They want us to cuss and clash,” the poets said, but they were there to defy that stereotype. “We are the heroes. This is what we do. We build each other up.” As the barrage of goodwill continued, a palpable shift happened in the room. It touched a nerve: had anyone ever seen men say so many kind things to and about one another in such a short time? It felt like a truly revolutionary moment. The poets hit their triumphant ending — “we are the titans you will always remember” — and the room exploded in cheering. It garnered the first clean sweep of 10s, a perfect score, from the judges.
The contest was still close, however, and Croilot declared that in the final round the teams would perform in reverse order. Verbal Slap led with a group piece about the harrowing Middle Passage and the countless people who drowned along the way instead of facing a life of bondage.
Pick Up the Pen finished with a duo giving a joyous ode to their neighborhood.
Dream Free finished up with a piece that took apart Thanksgiving from the point of view of Black and Indigenous people.
But it was Team News’s piece — again about the difficulties of Black men, seen from the perspective of Black women — that connected the deepest with the audience, and with the judges, earning the afternoon’s second perfect score. Team News’s performance made the race seem closer still. But in the end it wasn’t enough to catch Verbal Slap’s lead. The home team had won the slam. But it was the insights into the trials and difficulties of Black masculinity that had truly risen to the top.
