Marc 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. He considers himself a socialist. Uptown Poetry Slam Smith started at an open mic night at the Get Me High lounge in November 1984 called the Monday Night Poetry Reading. Even as poets scoffed at artists "performing" their work, rather than gently "reading" it, the event grew in popularity. Smith saw his approach as an "up yours" to establishment poets he considered snooty and effete, because at their events, "no one was listening". According to Smith, who once attended a conventional reading with his manuscripts concealed inside a newspaper,