The use of "slam" in the context of poetry and poetry competitions 'dans la Francophonie'

Question

There’s a very cool event happening right now in my wife’s French hometown and the event’s brochure mentions that there’s an “Atelier d’écriture slam” scheduled for 15H30, followed by a “Grand tournoi de slam-poésie“ at 16H with participation encouraged by the following : « Un slam dit, un cadeau offert ».

The use of “slam” as an adjective in “d’écriture slam” and even as part of the hyphenated noun “slam-poésie” are fairly consistent with my understanding of the use of “slam” in English to describe a poetry event/competition/tournament, but “Un slam dit” in the brochure’s above call for participation seems to be using “slam” as a noun by itself to mean the poem/poetry itself.

The French Wikipedia entry for “slam (poésie)” under the En France heading, paragraph 4, does mention the existence of confusion with the term’s usage, but this seems to be referring to confusion about whether the mere public presentation of poetry (with no competition involved) qualifies as “un slam,” and not to the term’s use as a noun to refer to the poems themselves.

Further below under the cited entry’s “Règles habituelles du slam” heading, the final “rule” includes language nearly identical to the language used in the “Festi Mot’s” brochure, to-wit:

“Un texte dit = un verre offert (est l'exception culturelle francophone)” …

… which tempts me to extrapolate that slam = texte as used in the brochure.

So my question is:

In the Francophone-wide world of “poetry slams” and “slam poetry,” is “slam” commonly used alone as a noun to refer to the poems/texts of poems presented and heard at “slam events/tournaments” (as an abbreviation for “slam-poésie”?)?

or is it a regional (Picardie, France?) use?

or perhaps was its use this way in the brochure simply a result of a lack of space in the brochure?

Answer 1

When french are using an english word, they first use it like english would do, then they try to make it french. Generally by adding -er after the verb to make it a first group verb and make it easy for everyone.

For example with "stop" (un stop, stoppeur, stoppeuse, stopper) or "bluff" (un bluff, bluffeur, bluffeuse, bluffer). We can see that it feel natural for "slam" to be "un slam", "slameur", slameuse" and "slamer". I think those are now accepted french words because the link I provided is "Larousse" a very famous french dictionnary.

Now, "slam" as an adjectif ("poésie slam") is not in the Larousse french dictionnary, rigth now. It seem to me that there would be very few use case for such an adjective ("texte slam", "rythme slam", "diction slam" ?). Moreother, I think that "poésie slam" is a pleonasme. If it's "un slam" it's already poetry, and you could simply use "slam" instead.