First Amendment Day kicked off yesterday with the 10th annual Poetry Slam. It was held at “The Space” also known as Ames Progressive.

A poetry slam is a competition between local poets to see who can “out poet” the rest.

“This poetry slam is a huge success every year,” said Jim Coppoc, senior lecturer in English who teaches slam poetry. “We normally have it at the Maintenance Shop, but we had a scheduling conflict last year [with the M-Shop] so we had it here.”

Poetry slam began 10 years ago during the first First Amendment Day celebration. Coppoc, who was the featured poet for the first event, has served as a speaker or committee member for every poetry slam to date.

This year, the poetry slam itself consisted of five poets, all reading their own original work. As well as musical performances by many local singers and bands. This event was open to anyone and had a mixture of different ages and personalities from current Iowa State students, graduates and one man much older than the rest.

After the poets finished, Clayton Severson, a graduate of Iowa State with a degree in biochemistry, played some of his original songs.

“I started playing guitar when I was 13 or 14,” Severson said. “I was going through a ‘Kurt Cobain’ phase and started out of genuine curiosity.”

One of his songs, “The Science of Love” he wrote because “there weren’t any love songs written for nerds, all the love songs on the radio were for the cool kids.”

Playing along with Severson was Risky Revival and TARAMIS, which stands for “Throw a rock at me I suck.” TARAMIS was an unofficial theme for the night of music the band members had just recently written.

“We continued to do it here at The Space because last year the crowd was so happy and warm” Coppoc said, “the crowd was smaller this year due to other events happening for First Amendment Day.”

During the same time as the poetry slam was the Caucus Cup, another First Amendment Day activity, which consisted of a debate between Republicans and Democrats from Iowa State about current political issues.

First Amendment Day itself will be held on April 12, with many events spread throughout the day. The largest events include a Freedom March, where anyone who is interested will walk from Ames City Hall to Beardshear to bring awareness to any issue they choose.

Freedom Sings, a program of the First Amendment Center that consists of  Grammy Award-winning musicians, will be performing. The musicians are to play music which has been banned, censored or called for social change.

According to the official First Amendment Day timeline, “This multimedia experience from the First Amendment Center uses the very music deemed too controversial to share the history of censorship on musical artists.”