175 Dueling Wordsmiths Go Public in Fullerton : Poetry: Well-versed bards bring the big-city art form of competitive readings to Orange County. ‘Exposure is the name of the game,’ a judge says.

‘Twas the battle of the bards--Orange County style.

Poets came down from Santa Monica and up from San Clemente. There were academics, published poets and closet versifiers. Slips of paper filled with soulful words quivered in the hands of the most experienced readers for what was billed as Southern California’s first “Poetry Performance Competition.”

Poetry readings have cropped up in the Southland’s most chic venues, breathing public life into a usually private literary art. But among more than 175 who overflowed a room of the Fullerton Museum Center on Saturday night to hear poets compete, there was just one beret in sight.

The crowd of grandmothers to grade-schoolers, at first daunted at the prospect of listening to 30 contestants, was captured from the very first reader, a young mother with waist-length, strawberry-blond hair:

. . . Eight girls in emerald green

tea dresses waft down the street like

victory

their calves like pistons, and while

I am not particularly aroused

it makes me sad that I cannot have

them

for just one night. Excess isn’t

sinful

it’s just hard to concentrate

afterward . . .

That was from one of two offerings by Tira Anne Palmquist of Tustin, who won the evening’s grand prize of $100 for her poems “Lust After Angels” and “Humanity.”

Yet it wasn’t the prizes that drew poets from throughout Southern California to Fullerton on a Saturday night but, as one writer said, “the need to shatter a poet’s anonymity.”

For Palmquist, 27, it worked. Previously unknown to Poets Reading Inc., she is now guaranteed a spot as a featured reader at one of the organization’s upcoming events.

“Exposure is the name of the game here,” said Charles Webb, committee member for the Los Angeles Poetry Festival and one of the evening’s three judges. “There were a lot of people whose names I will remember that were impressive--and that can’t hurt at all.”

“I think we started a tradition,” said Michael Logue, one of the founders of Poets Reading Inc. The nonprofit group, founded two years ago, hosts semimonthly poetry readings at the Fullerton Museum Center and sponsors scholarships for writing students at Cal State Fullerton and Fullerton College.

Logue predicted that poetry competitions will quickly spread. Already the Los Angeles-based poetry group, Soul Visions Productions, has adapted the idea for an upcoming event.

Performance-poetry competitions may be new to Southern California, but they reportedly thrive in New York, New Orleans and other cities. In Chicago, the contests are called “Poetry Slams.” Poets face off and hurl stanzas at each other, trying to best one another like old-time tap dancers outstepping each other in a “challenge.”

“There is no definition of performance poetry, and it varies from region to region,” Logue said. “We hope to create a definition for this region.”

The idea for the Poets Reading competition was actually imported by a Minnesota poet. But the organization created its own rules, and Logue admitted that he didn’t know what to expect Saturday night.

Would a performance poetry competition attract performance artists reading poetry by other writers or poets performing their own work?

The contestants ran the gamut. Most poets read from their own work, dramatizing slightly rather than performing. Themes ranged from the mundane--Saturday morning on line at the post office--to the sublime. Love, sexuality, death and alienation made regular appearances.

Still, some presentations were definitely influenced by performance art. Vicki Manis of Fullerton stepped up in a lavender hoop skirt to present her piece on failed love.

As she closed, she reached beneath her shawl for something hidden. After an uncomfortable struggle, Manis yanked out a bloody beef heart, and slammed it to the floor with a thudding splat:

. . . The only ones I’ve had are bad

Are there any good men to be had?

Though the performances were uneven, the judges said they were impressed and surprised at the writing talent the event attracted. Webb and his fellow jurors--poet and UC Irvine professor Robert Peters and Antonia Smolen, instructor of oral interpretation at Cal State Fullerton--judged harshly.

Performance, content and overall presentation were weighted equally, with a total of 90 points possible. Most contestants hovered in the 40s. One aspiring Charles Bukowski received an 8.

“Really, (evaluating) poetry is like judging apples and oranges,” Webb admitted. “It is really difficult to set poems up against each other because poems have such different objectives.”

The contest made some audience members into new fans of Orange County culture. John deFelice of Costa Mesa said that he usually does not attend poetry events but that Saturday’s competition could make him a convert.

“I didn’t expect to see the Super Bowl of poetry,” deFelice said.

He also said he didn’t expect an intellectually stimulating event to be on a local entertainment calendar because in Orange County you “tone your pocketbook during the week and tone your body during the weekend.”

“A huge segment of the population is sick and tired of brainless entertainment,” said Logue, explaining the growing support for poetry events. “The time is ripe. . . . Poet’s Reading Inc. is simply filling a void that is ready to be filled.”

But Lee Mallory, poet and English instructor at Rancho Santiago College, explained poetry’s new-found popularity in loftier terms.

“I think the poet these days is filling a spiritual gap,” Mallory said. “Poetry is providing a way for people to get back in touch with their basic truths.”

The reason for the attention to their art doesn’t matter, said Robert Odom, who won second place for his poems “Careful Men” and “This Body Is Sacred.”

Poetry “can pass out of popular fashion,” he said, “but it can’t be a fad. And even if it is, I don’t care because we’ll pick up some recruits here.”

After terming Saturday’s event a “resounding success,” Logue said there is enough demand to make the event semiannual.

“What we really want to have happen,” he said, “is to have people say, ‘Poetry is fun? A festive atmosphere? Beer and wine on the patio? Maybe we should go check out a poetry reading.’ ”