The Sacrificial Poet / Post

Okay, how many of you lovable nerds out there went to poetry slams like I did back in college? Nah? Just me?

Okay, well, at a competitive poetry slam there's something called a "Sacrificial Poet"; it's a poet who performs first but isn't a part of the competition.  Their job, on paper, is to give the judges a baseline to calibrate to.  You know, so the humans who have to score something as subjective as poetry have a way to align on what a 6/10 or a 8/10 feels like. But that's not their real job.  If that was their real job they'd be called the Calibrating Poet or the Normalizing Poet, but nope, they are called the Sacrificial Poet.  Because every performer knows it's a sacrifice to go first.  

Going first is tough.  You're thrust out into the unknown unknown.  Maybe the audience is extra cold today and it spooks you.  You keep staring back at the face of an impassive woman in the front row and you never get your groove.  Maybe the bartender that doubles as the sound guy set the mic gain too loud and the screeching feedback makes a baby cry.  Maybe it goes perfectly and you deliver the performance of your life but only 10 people are there because there's a ton of traffic on the 80.

It's stressful, but at the same time, it's purposeful.  You know exactly what your role is and there's comfort in that.  Your role is to make the audience feel safe, get them to laugh a little bit, get them to tuck their phones into their pockets, get the bartender/sound-guy to check the mic levels, kill a little time so that the perennially-late folks can arrive.  It's an act of service.  And if you play this role enough, you start to realize that it's not about your performance at all, not about your clever little wordplay or the perfectly timed pauses.  Nope! It's all about the guts to be first into the arena.

So with that said, thank you Sacrificial First Post, for your service. Let's go.