The Personal is Political for Writers at OC Poetry Slam
- Lola Olvera
- Aug 18, 2025
- 7 min read
The monthly poetry performance competition at The Den is one of Orange County’s brightest literary gathering spaces.
When Adhi Kona moved from Seattle to Orange County to attend UC Irvine, the robust writing community he was used to was not as easy to find.
“It kind of felt like a vacuum,” the Irvine resident said. “There were a lot of things that I had gotten used to being connected to that just didn't really seem to exist here .… Forget (open) mics, I wasn’t seeing even touring poets coming here, so I didn’t really know where to look.”
Two years later, he not only found the writing community he was looking for, but also numerous other opportunities and gathering spaces.
His first “proverbial watering hole” ended up being the OC Poetry Slam.
Like Adhi, when Tomi Simmons moved to Orange County from Phoenix, Arizona, two years ago, she found herself driving to Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California to find slam poetry events.
“The performance aspect was really missing here,” she said. “There's a lot of open mics, but just the aspect of enjoying poetry – in a memorized way, in a more theatrical way – was missing.”
With the confidence of a lifetime of writing and poetry slam experience under her belt, she launched the Instagram page OC Poetry Slam in January 2024. Only a few months later, Simmons would be joined by co-organizer Kimberly Bittle. Bittle had been writing since elementary school but had never performed poetry for an audience. After attending her first OC Poetry Slam, she was reminded of how much she loved the community of it, and went up to Simmons to ask how she could help.
“I said, you know, ‘I have time for a hobby,’” Bittle said. “‘Let me do whatever I can’ .… I've loved every minute of it.”
The Den (formerly the Gypsy Den), which had already been hosting open mic events, was eager to be the new home of the OC Poetry Slam and enthusiastic about the prospect of a packed house of poetry fans ready to eat and drink during the monthly, three-hour events.
Despite what it may seem on the surface, poetry is thriving in bookstores, cafes, and libraries across Orange County. The Untold Story Bookstore in Anaheim, Anaheim Central Library, The Night Owl in Fullerton, and The Den Cafe all host regular open mics on a weekly or monthly basis, welcoming artists of all crafts, from music to comedy to writing. Some spaces, like Arvida Book Co. in Tustin and The Ugly Mug Cafe in Orange offer poetry-specific open mics and poetry readings, often led by local poets themselves. Simmons’ and Bittle’s OC Poetry Slam, however, remains unique both in that it is a formal competition of performances that are often fully memorized and incorporate more theatrical elements.
Each competition starts off with nine poets. A team of five judges, chosen randomly from the audience, offer scores from 1-10, the average of which becomes each poet’s final score. Judges typically score generously, with anything under a nine earning gentle heckling from the audience – “Higher, higher!”
After the first elimination, five poets remain, and after the second elimination, the final three poets receive prizes, all funded from ticket sales. First place wins $100 cash, second place wins $50, and third place gets a $25 gift card to The Den.
“People really pour their hearts and souls on stage,” Simmons said. “Because if you're not feeling the poem or really being true on stage, the judges can see that and they'll let you know through their scores.”
Sawyer Henderson, a therapist and poetry lover from Fullerton, was one of the randomly chosen judges of the July poetry slam.
“I don't just consider the written word, I am also considering their performance,” she said. “I (look for) certain literary devices, if there's fluidity in the lines of the poetry, if they call back to things they mentioned earlier in the poem that can really emphasize a point.”
Harley Adams (they/them), a musician and writer, and founder of the music and arts nonprofit Brain and Body Music Studio in Orange, won third place that night.
“Tomi does a really good job at making the competition kind of part of the performance and less competitive,” they said. ”There's no sense of poets hating on each other or trying to beat each other. Everyone's in support of each other.”
A supportive environment was crucial as the poets tackled heavy topics, including mental health, sexual assault, gender dynamics, Palestine and fascism.
The night’s first place winner, whose pen name is Peacock Secrets, is a poet from Anaheim writing from her perspective as a Black Muslim woman. Citing Malcolm X as her role model, she performs bold, passionate poems on liberation movements, police brutality, colonialism and the prison industrial complex.
Henderson described Peacock Secrets’ first-round poem, a rally against white supremacy, as “timely.”
“I gave her a high score, I really liked her piece,” she said. “Her performance was really powerful in terms of her variation in volume and most of it was memorized and (she) really looked out into the audience and made connections.”
Peacock Secrets’ third-round piece, “Hijab-tastic,” was an ode to Muslim women and traditional Islamic clothing, in which she sassily proclaimed, “You’re all alarmed cuz I’m devout / I’m hijab-tastic! Not even a single toe is out.”
“It's important for people to see Muslim women and Muslims in a way that doesn't have to do with a negative image,” she said. “I'm a Muslim woman who dresses the way I do, I dress in the full Islamic, mandatory clothing in terms of the scarf on the head and the long dress to the floor .… I like the confidence that (my poem) encourages in Muslim women and I like the confidence that it inspires in people overall to be yourself.”
Simmons believes that poetry can help people from different backgrounds gain new perspectives on other’s experiences and teach them why and how they should show up for their community.
“You can't empathize as much if you don't really let yourself understand or hear other people,” she said.
Kona has noticed his writing style evolving as he’s realized poetry’s capacity to engage an audience in a deeper way.
“I tend to write a lot about personal experience, but it's been really interesting in the context of slam because it's encouraged me to get, not more political, but to find things I care about that other people also care about,” he said. “I imagine, like, do I have something to say that I would want other people to listen to? It's had a really interesting effect on my work.”
Kona’s third piece at the poetry slam explored the impacts of the patriarchy on men who do not want to participate in it, calling manhood “a legacy of misused power.”
“When you become a man, your voice also becomes a dig site .… You have to dig yourself out from underneath the rubble of toxic masculinity, because otherwise no one will hear your heart. You won't have any way to tell them where it is; they'll just assume it isn’t there.”
Although he was used to sharing deeply personal work, he felt surprisingly emotional after this particular performance.
“After I got off stage, I just wanted to start crying, frankly. I felt very stunned,” he said. “There was this enormity that I had tapped into that I didn’t even know was there. For pretty much the rest of the night, even after I got home hours later, I felt like there was just something flowing out of me. I didn’t even know that my work could achieve that so honestly, like even just this past slam has really changed my understanding of what vulnerability can mean.”
Adams’ first poem of the night detailed an experience with grief.
“(It’s) about the physical sensations, about how that feels in the moment, that your face hurts, that your eyes are swollen, that you, like, have a lump in your throat,” they said. “And kind of just being present with that grief and with that emotion, which I think is necessary in today's world, for people to hold space for their grief and their anger and their sadness.”
These emotional impacts are why Henderson sees creative outlets as a powerful tool for mental health.
“I like using art in the therapy I do with my clients,” she said. “I think anything that is expressing an inner world is therapeutic, whether it be painting or spoken word or writing in a journal. It's even therapeutic for me to listen to other artists and consider how it impacts me or how I can relate to that person.”
Peacock Secrets believes it’s this two-way communication that is special about poetry performance.
“The thing about poetry is that it's extremely validating for both the poet and for the person reading the poetry or listening to the spoken word,” she said. “You're hearing someone recite a poem that expresses a feeling and you're like, ‘That's exactly what I've been saying!’ And then you see people all around you – strangers – who are clapping and cheering and snapping and agreeing with the same thing and you're like – I'm not alone.”
Simmons and Bittle are both grateful to not feel alone as organizers either, thanks to their network of personal connections, from family to friends, who help tally up scores, to the local organizations and spaces that support their work, such as LibroMobile, The Untold Story Bookstore & Cafe and Pride at the Pier.
“One of the things that I got to experience was community through everyone who shows up for this, everyone who's been supportive of us all along,” Bittle said. “It was our community who helped us to do this.”
The next OC Poetry Slam will be Aug. 30 at The Den.
OC Poetry Slam
When: Monthly; next one will be 7-10 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 30
Where: The Den Cafe, 125 N. Broadway, #D, Santa Ana
Cost: $10
Information: Tickets. Email ocpoetryslam@gmail.com to compete.
