106 & Parks: I Have A Dream Top Ten Countdown

Last night I was pretty busy helping run MSU’s Black Poet Society event on campus. The event was titled “106 & Parks: I Have A Dream Top Ten Countdown” and was modeled off of the show on BET. The event had multiple facets:

• Poetry slam with 6 poets
• Music performances
• “Throwback joint of the day” was “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou
• Crowd participation battles and more

The poetry slam design was a great idea. To keep the format in a “top ten countdown” style, we started with six poets. Then the top three moved on to the second round. From there, the best poet performed one more piece. This design made for 10 performances, all increasing in quality.

I want to give a shout out to Terrance Grantham and Kenya Abbott Jr. as they were the hosts for the night (playing the role of AJ and Free). We had about 200 people show up, and we know we’ll see a lot of familiar faces at our next event.

I recorded most of the performances and have embedded them below. The event ended in a tie and the two winners were @MACKdaPOET and @DeonteOsayande. Mack is a new member of the Black Poet Society, and Deonte is real involved with the Detroit slam poetry scene.