Where poetic nerds get heard

We’re giving you fair warning of the National Poetry Slam 2011, held in Boston on 9 to 13 August.

This year it includes the Nerd Slam, where to be able to do your reading, you must first prove “nerdspertise” on “a variety of topics from Einstein’s Theory Of Relativity to Chris Claremont’s run on the Uncanny X-Men comics,” as the press release says.

We must warn nerd poets that Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Harry Potter are banned as specialist topics. Our civilisation has evidently peaked.