St. Paul's 'Soap Boxing’ Slam Poetry Team Crowned National Champions

The Saint Paul 'Soap Boxing' slam poetry team, which includes local emcee Kyle "Guante" Myhre, just won the slam poetry national championship. Congrats to the local poets; following is the press release, written by the team's coach, about their tremendous accomplishment:

The St. Paul ‘Soap Boxing’ Slam team has been crowned the champions of the 2009 National Poetry Slam.

The 20th annual National Poetry Slam (NPS) was held in West Palm Beach, Florida from August 4thth. This competition (basically the Olympics for poetry) brought 68 4 to 5 person teams together from the US, Canada and Europe. through 8

This is the third year that the Soap Boxing Poetry Slam (held at the Artists’ Quarter every first Monday) has sent a team to NPS. The team advanced to semi-finals the first two times it was at NPS. The team ranked 15th place overall in 2007 and 13th place in 2008 but did not make it to finals (reserved for the top 4 teams) until this year.

This year’s finals set St. Paul against 3 teams who were not new to the finals stage: Albuquerque - who won NPS in 2005, San Francisco - who won in 1999, and the always-tough Nuyorican team from NYC.

Team members Khary "6 is 9" Jackson, Michael Mlekoday, Kyle "Guante" Myhre, Sierra DeMulder and team alternate Jenn Parks had been writing, rehearsing and fundraising since the team was selected in May, coached by St Paul SlamMaster Matthew Rucker. All That hard work paid off as this is the first time a team from Minnesota has even made the finals stage, let alone took home the trophy.

On behalf of the St. Paul Slam team, I would like to personally thank everyone who supported us by coming to the Slams, buying raffle tickets and team DVDs, and making contributions of money and/or goods. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Members of the team will be at the Artists’ Quarter tonight (Monday August 10th) to perform and answer questions from 9pm until 11pm, during the Artists’ Quarter’s weekly open mic.