Tomorrow night, Volume One will be hosting the North Coast Slam Battle at The Nucleus Café (for the second year). Basically, this is the biggest spoken word event in town all year long, as high caliber poetry slam teams from Minneapolis, Madison, Milwaukee, and St. Paul converge on Eau Claire to compete for a spot at the 2009 National Poetry Slam in West Palm Beach, Florida.

And just like a normal slam, the audience (that means you) will be picking the winners. Minneapolis slam master Allison Broeren (a former Eau Clairian) will be running the actual slam, after a couple of opening spoken word sets – one from Volume One’s own Eric Rasmussen.

This was a blast when we did this last year. The performances are really at a level rarely seen in the Valley. I’m not putting our local poets down. It’s just that the teams coming tomorrow night have poets that slam on a weekly basis, and their craft is pretty damn honed. These are the best competitors from some major cities. Also, this slam runs according to national “team” rules which is pretty exciting, as teams can choose on the fly what poet will be performing, sending up competitors to best challenge the poet before them. This is gonna be good.

Friday night. The Nucleus. 8pm. $3. More details.