Sandburg Days: Rootabaga Poetry Slam Hosted by Mark Kelly Smith

Marc Kelly Smith (born 1949) is an American poet and founder of the poetry slam movement, for which he received the nickname Slam Papi. Smith was born in 1949 and grew up on the southeast side of Chicago. He attended/graduated Charles P. Caldwell Elementary School and James H. Bowen High School. Smith spent most of his young life as a construction worker but has written poetry since he was 19. Extracts from the book “Stage A Poetry Slam” by Marc Kelly Smith with Joe Kraynak: “Performance poetry as we know it today was the brainchild of yours truly – Marc Kelly Smith (So What!), ringmaster of the blue-collar intellectuals and eccentrics who crammed into Chicago’s Get Me High Jazz Club on Monday nights from November 1984 to September 1986 for a wide-open poetry experiment that spawned the Chicago Poetry Ensemble and evolved into the international poetry slam movement.