Scenankomst : Finns det en plats för slam i skolsammanhang?

Sammanfattning: This degree project essay examines the literary culture phenomenon known as poetry slam, a competitive format for performance poetry, with the purpose of discussing whether poetry slam could contribute to upper secondary school Swedish teaching or not. The essay consists of two parts, one where poetry slam is presented and one where poetry slam is discussed from a didactic perspective. In the first part, a brief history of poetry slam and its origins in the U.S. is presented, followed by a discussion of the ideology within the slam movement. Furthermore, the set of rules that regulate poetry slams are presented and finally the first part of the essay is ended with a discussion of poetry slam as a poetic genre of its own. The second part starts by presenting and discussing the concept of aesthetic learning processes and how poetry slam might enable such processes. Poetry slam is then related to the Swedish subject syllabus for upper secondary school in order to analyse whether there is any rationale for poetry slam in Swedish teaching or not. Furthermore, poetry slam is related to literacy development, first by discussing creative writing and then by discussing oral performance. The results of the analysis shows that poetry slam is foremost motivated in Swedish teaching as a literary historical content, partly as an opportunity to work with oral performance, and also to cultivate students’ linguistic subjectivity. Poetry slam could possibly enable aesthetic learning processes, although it may be questioned whether poetry slam qualifies as an artistic community professional enough to provide artistic working methods. The very concept of a school poetry slam could also be seen as a contradiction, when considering the slam movement’s self image of counter culture, as schools themselves could be interpreted as dominant literary establishments. Possible pitfalls related to poetry slam in Swedish teaching are the competitive format’s effect on students socio-emotional safety and the scoring system that may be hazardous for students’ linguistic subjectivity. Also, poetry slam may not meet the curricular demands on rhetoric performances which are mandatory in the upper secondary school Swedish courses, and thus questions may be raised if oral poetic performances can be prioritised at the expense of oral rhetoric performances. Moreover, the free, creative space provided to students within creative writing processes puts high demands on the teacher balancing students’ creative freedom, in order to possibly articulate hidden knowledge, with making sure that students do not spend time procrastinating.