Poetry Center San José presents San José Poetry Slam – Live In Person!
Come early and grab dinner. Wheelhouse owns the Round Table Pizza next door, and you can order your food from the bar in Wheelhouse.
Parking is free in Willow Glen and most of the parking lots are behind the businesses
Wheelhouse of Willow Glen
1173 Lincoln Avenue
San Jose, CA 95125
Sunday, June 21, 2026
Doors open and the sign up list goes out at 6:30pm
The Poetry Slam starts at 7:00pm
Admission is $5–10 sliding scale; no one turned away for lack of funds.
Hosted by Scorpiana Xlent.
Our Featured Poet is Raggedy Andey!
Raggedy Andey is an abandoned house-obsessed poet and mentor from Santa Cruz. In addition to her written works, she was grand-slam champion of Santa Cruz in 2015, joining her team at the National Poetry Slam in Oakland where they placed in the top 5 overall. She went on to sweep the Southwest Shootout in 2018, winning the individual competition and the group competition alongside her fellow Santa Cruz teammates. Today, she organizes an exclusive poetry series celebrating the craft of writing, and spends her days basking in the sun with her little dog Frank. Her favorite word is avid.
Poetry Slam Competition Info
Cash prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place.
If you have never been to a Poetry Slam before, a poetry slam is a competition, imagine spoken word poetry as an olympic sport. The rules are simple:
1.) Poets must use their own poems.
2.) poet must use only one poem per round.
3.) no musical accompaniment.
4.) no props.
5.) there is a time limit of 3 minutes and 10 seconds. going over that will result in a time penalty.
This is a two-round slam, poets with the highest scores will move up to round two.
If you're not competing, we could use judges.
A Little Bit About the Slam
Established in 1998, the San José Poetry Slam was one of the first continuous competitive poetry events in the Bay Area. It has been a foundation and home for spoken word and performance poetry, loaded with a collection of regional and national championships to boot. San José has a widely respected name for spoken word thanks to the quality work and notable poets that have come up through the ranks, all thanks to the poetry slam community. Our slam has hosted many acclaimed featured guests from around the world, and it has brought home both national and international trophies.
Please remember to submit a quick audience survey to help us improve our logistics and content and report to our funders and sponsors. Here is the link to the survey: https://bit.ly/3M63VqH
Poetry Center San José promotes and supports the literary arts in San José. Over the past four decades, PCSJ has brought hundreds of exceptional writers from around the country to read from their works and, in many cases, to conduct workshops for local writers. PCSJ is a nonprofit organization established in 1978. Its base of operations is in the charming turn-of-the-century Victorian home where the renown poet Edwin Markham once lived, now located in San José History Park. Poetry Center San José is a member supported organization and is funded, in part, by grants from Applied Materials Foundation, the City of San José's Office of Cultural Affairs, Knight Foundation, Poets & Writers, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, SVCREATES, in partnership with the County of Santa Clara and the California Arts Council and also supported in part by a SVCreates National Endowment for the Arts American Rescue Plan grant. We also thank Brandenburg Family Foundation and Anne & Mark's Art Party for their generous giving.