The Southern Fried Poetry Slam Code of Conduct is a guiding philosophy for our participants and volunteers to govern themselves by. It is designed to outline what Southern Fried is and stands for. These are not rules for behavior, but ideals that we hope to be reflected by our members and subsequent communities.
The Southern Fried Poetry Slam Festival will not engage in discrimination or harassment of any person based on race, religion, ancestry, ethnicity, age, color, marital status, disability, sexual orientation including gender identity, or national origin.
This nondiscrimination policy applies to the competition, side events, and any other activities or spaces related to the festival. The festival is committed to artistic freedom but is also committed to maintaining a space that values people’s diverse backgrounds and attributes and establishing an inclusive and nondiscriminatory culture.
The goal of the Southern Fried Poetry Slam is to provide an open stage for the diverse communities of the Southeast region and beyond. It fosters and supports a network of socially engaged poets dedicated to celebrating diversity and transformation through poetry slam, public performance, teaching artistry, and service.
The Festival provides an open, inclusive, and safe space for the exchange of poetry and performance.
It is dedicated to the cultivation of appreciation for performance poetry and to the development of the craft. Through poetry slam, public performance, artistic development, and community service the festival creates an exchange of ideas and resources intended to incite and promote change.
The festival offers opportunities for the surrounding communities to experience the art form in a curated environment. It is open to poets of all ages and seeks to continue the development of the poetic voice to promote public art, foster relevant discourses, celebrate our various cultures, spread knowledge to vast audiences, and speak out against injustices.
In that we strive to maintain a sense of family, we cannot tolerate actions that are in direct contradiction to our principles. We will not allow acts of plagiarism or sportsmanship that do not include respect, fairness, and honesty.
We will not allow verbal and nonverbal expression that is used to incite or promote discrimination, hostility, or violence against someone on the basis of their membership in a social or ethnic group.
Participating poets and volunteers agree to be bound by these guidelines while acting under the time frame allotted for the Festival up through the awarding of prize money.
It is what we believe in that makes us who we are, and it is who we are that governs our ethics.
“The points are not the point, the point is the poetry.”
– Allan Wolf, founder of Southern Fried Poetry Slam