Poetry

1. All poems performed in competition must be the original work of the performing poet. 3 original poems are needed to compete in each slam. During the regular season, poets may repeat poems per slam performed. During the Grand Slam, only two poems can be performed, each must perform one new poem.
2. There are no props, music or costumes allowed during poetry performances. Poets may use whatever is on stage and available to all poets while performing 
3. Poets have a 3-minute time limit with a 10 second grace period.
4. After 3:10, a poet’s score is penalized .5 points for every 10 seconds over the time limit. For instance, at 3:20 the poet loses 1 point, at 3:30 1.5 points, at 3:40 2 points, etc. During the Grand Slam, the grace period will be 20 seconds.
5. All slams are 3 rounds
6. Regular season scores are cumulative (All scores are added up for a total overall score). 1st and 2nd poets will move to the Grand Slam list. Grand Slam score are not cumulative scoring. Each round will be clean slate. Top 4 poet are determined by 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th place scores. Top 4 poet form as The Saint Louis Poetry Slam Team.
7. In the regular season if there is a tie, a head-to-head round will take place to determine
8. Mulligan Rule (the do over): In the event that a major disruption causes a bout to come to a stop before the end of a rotation, and if continuing the rotation would cause some teams to perform under very different conditions than others within that rotation (such as, but not limited to, the loss of two or more judges so that some teams in that rotation would be judged by a substantially different group of judges) 
9. Poets can protest if they feel like a violation of rule happened
10. After each slam all poets must sign off on the scoring sheet with signature and  title of poem for each round

Judges

1. Judges must be impartial and not related to or in the entourage of any competitors in the festival.
2. A diverse range of judges is preferred.
3. A person who is employed by the venue and currently on the clock may not judge.
4. Poems are judged from 0.0 to 10.0, with a single decimal point encouraged as a tiebreaker.
5. Five judges are chosen per slam. For every poem scored, the high and low scores are dropped and the remaining three added together for that poem’s score.
6. Before the bout begins judges meet with the MC and are warned about score creep, asked to be consistent and given an opportunity to use a sacrifice poem to practice scoring and to use as a base score.
7. Before the beginning of any bout, poets will be introduced to the judges and given an opportunity for each team to veto one judge. Poets are reminded that judges are chosen from the audience available.
8.  Judges are chosen by the host of the slam.