Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 14, 1995 TAG: 9508140119
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Roanoke poetry slam team made the semifinals and took seventh place overall Saturday at the National Poetry Slam in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Team Sponsor Maria Kusznir said Roanoke faced tough competition, where they met teams from Boston and San Francisco.
She defined a poetry slam as a ``performance poetry competition judged by the audience rather than `experts.'''
Team members included Patricia Johnson, who toured recently with Poetry Alive - a group of actors that performs poems for schoolchildren across the country. She tied for seventh in the individual competition at last year's slam and is a professional actress, director and writer.
Nick Glennon and Simon Adkins, both of Roanoke, and Julia Delbridge, a Roanoke native who now lives in Radford, completed the team's lineup.
Delbridge has a master's degree in English and appeared at last year's Lollapalooza progressive music concert as a poet.
First place and the $2,000 cash prize went to a team from Asheville, N.C.
Getting involved in a poetry slam is as simple as signing up to compete the first Tuesday of each month at the Iroquois, 324 Salem Ave. Slams are held from 9 p.m. till about midnight and the competition is open to all.
Computed to the last stop
Computers have become such a part of American life that it was inevitable: Now there are computer programs to help school systems arrange their bus routes and schedules.
You feed the addresses of all the students in a neighborhood into the computer and it develops the most efficient bus schedule and route.
The Roanoke School Board has voted to buy the computer software at a maximum cost of $27,250. The school system will negotiate the price with the computer company.
The program is particularly beneficial when a school system has many children leaving their home schools to attend magnet schools or special education programs, said Richard Kelley, assistant school superintendent for operations.
It will enable the school system to transport its 12,772 children with fewer buses and could reduce transportation costs by 15 percent, he said.
The system also will provide a computerized record of all the students on a bus, Kelley said.
"You can call up a bus and determine immediately who rides the bus and where they live," he said.
by CNB