Poetry lovers packed into Honeycutt Coffee for the All-Arizona Poetry Slam Championship. Photo by Raquel Hendrickson

A standing-room-only crowd that spilled out the front door of Honeycutt Coffee met the first All-Arizona Poetry Slam Championship to come to Maricopa.

Maricopa Arts Council hosted the event Saturday. Approximately 80 people attended to hear some of the state’s best performance poets. That included two competitors from Maricopa taking their work to the next level for the first time.

The contest was varied and deep, with unpredictable scores from judges pulled from the audience. Maricopa Alex Hurley and Laura Olivieri did not survive the first round, but competitors called the event “awesome” and “incredible.” Hurley, a high schooler, was the youngest on the bill. Topics ranged from race relations to Star Wars to sweaty armpits.

Winner Lauren Perry of Phoenix is a 15-year veteran of slam poetry, being introduced to the craft among “old-schoolers” like Bernard “The Klute” Schober, Corbet Dean and Bill Campana in Mesa.

“I brought this awful piece of poetry. It was really bad,” she recalled. “I read my poem, and Klute was like, ‘Well, you did good. Just don’t suck next time. But I made it onto a team my first year and was like, ‘Now I love this,’ and now I do this all the time.”

A key motivator in growing Arizona’s slam poetry scene for two decades, Schober has been the slam master for Maricopa’s six events. He again emceed Saturday’s event.

Lauren Perry (center) won the event, with Stacy Eden placing third and Briana Hammerstrom third.

Stacy Eden, also from Phoenix, finished second on the night. She has a degree in English but has been a goldsmith for a dozen years.

“It just started coming out of me about a year ago,” she said. “And then six months ago, I did my first open mic. And my very first slam was actually in November. And I won that one, and I went back for the city finals and won that one and now I’m here. It’s the coolest community I’ve ever been a part of and never felt so understood as a person, and it’s by complete strangers most of the time. It’s pretty phenomenal.”

Originally on the “wait list” for the competition, Flagstaff’s Briana Grace Hammerstrom finished third. Starting in California seven years ago, she has worked many regional slams and is one of the organizers of the Flagstaff slam.

“I love the entire Arizona scene,” she said. “It’s a community that wants you to grow.”

The competition had 14 poets along with calibration poets.

“We had three strong poets and three strong women,” MAC co-founder Judith Zaimont said. “A good portion of what they had to say had to do with being strong poets and strong women.”

The top three poets took home cash, with first prize netting $400.