Posted by Paul Devlin:
Here’s the complete version of a classic “group piece” from Team Austin excerpted in SlamNation.
Team Austin had become masters of these ensemble poetry performances, and they were highly favored to win it all at the National Poetry Slam in Portland as a result. Group pieces generally score higher than individual performances. However, Team Austin scored poorly in the finals, and no one is quite sure why. Perhaps there was some backlash against too many group pieces, and the audience wanted to hear more individual voices?
In any case, as can be seen here, Team Austin was great at group pieces, a genre of performance poetry unique to the National Poetry Slam.