True to their name, the Mayhem Poets are about to shake up the poetry world. The poetry group based out of Jersey City recently won the Ideawins.com Ultimate Challenge for the best small business idea in America sponsored by Microsoft.
Their idea? A spoken word performance workshop and cafe that celebrates multiculturalism through education and workshops for people of all ages. And then at night the cafe transforms itself into a spoken word venue.
Their prize? How about $100,000 in start-up capital, a rent-free store front for one year in New York City, and a suite of Microsoft software and services to help get their business going. It's enough to make an artist trade in their Mac for a PC and swear allegiance to Bill Gates!
The idea for "Slam Shops" started back when the three founding members (Scott Tarazevits, Mason Granger, and Kyle Sutton) were attending Rutgers.
"People said it was a pipe dream," recalled Kyle Sutton. "But we believed we had a product that would work. There were a lot of naysayers who said how is poetry going to be a business?"
"All of us, we've always had a passion about this style of poetry that once it gets out there - once it's exposed - it connects with people," he added.
"Consumers, afficionados, patrons of the arts... everyone will gravitate towards this. I was confident but, at the same time, I knew that the traditional feeling was that the arts wouldn't make it as a business plan so I was nervous. But as people saw our video and saw it was a pretty cool idea, the confidence grew and we began feeling pretty good about it."
This competition was open to all small businesses meaning they were up against people with MBAs and people with years of business training. This is not the sort of fight artists are favored to win. But Sutton isn't your ordinary artist. He's read books by people like Bill Gates and Howard Schultz (of Starbucks fame) and knew the business plan had to be solid for them to have a chance to win.
One of the big keys behind Slam Shops is that the cafe in New York City will hopefully be just the first of many across the country. They see the combination of teaching and entertainment as a perfect fit for many cities. In reality, they may have stumbled a niche that could explode like comedy clubs did in the 1980s.
"We want to get as much space as possible so we can have solid sized performances there," said Sutton. "We want to have a school time series during the daytime with performances and workshops for students. In the evening, we'll open up as a cafe performance space where you might have a slam night one night and a featured performance night the next with top billing slam poets. Hopefully we can even have someone from one of our workshops open up.
"We really want to show how up-and-coming poets can grow to a point where they are able to make a living out of it. We want poets to be able to get more recognition, and, at the same time, we want to book people who have already paid their dues for featured events and things like that. On weekends, we also want to have general public workshops. We're looking forward to making it a real resource for the community. It's for the poet community to grow as well as for the general public to come and enjoy some nice entertainment."
One of the most impressive goals of the project is to help turn poetry into a viable full-time job. For years, Sutton has told people he was a full-time poet and heard people say "no seriously, what do you really do?"
"We want poets to be in the workforce so people won't scoff when someone says 'I'm a full-time poet'," he explained. "It's like hearing someone say I'm a doctor or I do construction work. We want to make poetry as big as possible. We want the opportunity to make this a business model we can spread to other major cities and hopefully internationally because we really think the product being the performance poetry itself is so diverse and so accessible and we've brought it to every echelon and have seen the response. I think when it's put on that scale the sky's the limit. Before you know it we'll be slamming in space!"
The Mayhem Poets was formed about five years ago. Since that time the group has shown that poetry can indeed be a full-time occupation if every avenue is taken. The group started out doing whatever they could to perform whenever and wherever. They performed in jails, youth detention centers, hospitals, psychiatric wards, drug rehabs, nursing homes - you name it. After each performance their name grew and soon they were performing at bigger and bigger venues. It didn't take long before they started doing regional theatres and touring all over the world.
Currently the Mayhem Poets are comprised of a diverse and dynamic collective of young writers and entertainers who are dedicated to bringing slam and performance poetry into university, high school, middle school, and elementary school settings.
The group has a performance scheduled in Lake Como, New Jersey on Saturday, April 28th and then will head off to Canada for the Calgary International Children's Festival on May 14th and the Northern Alberta Festival on May 29th.
Events at schools are often booked about a year in advance. The Mayhem Poets will often perform at a regional theatre in front of students bussed in as part of field trips.
"I think that artists don't always look in every location available to them," said Sutton. "Artists don't really look at elementary, middle, and high schools - they look at wanting to be superstars and wanting to be on tv right away. They don't necessarily look at what's right in front of them. It's like with any movement, starting a grassroots following is key. Of course you also have to be organized on the business end as well and I think a lot of artists just don't like dealing with the business end."
The group is currently scouting out potential locations for their first cafe and working on the details of their plan to make sure the first cafe won't be their last. Sutton is looking forward to picking the brains from some of the corporate consultants that come as part of their first prize winnings.
"A lot of times when you talk about the commercialism or corporation of the arts red flags go up," said Sutton. "The main thing is we want to make sure that the business model keeps in mind the artistic integrity and the artistic quality that we think will inspire people creatively and performance wise. That's going to be key in doing this."
For more on the group visit www.mayhempoets.com