Southern Fried Honor Code and Mission Statement
The Southern Fried Poetry Slam Code of Ethics 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