Poetry Slam featured 72 certified teams, culminating in five days of competition. Today, there are poetry slam competitions in a number of countries around the globe. Poetry Slam, Inc. sanctions three major annual poetry competitions (for poets 18+) on a national and international scale: the National Poetry Slam (NPS), the individual World Poetry Slam (iWPS), and the Women of the World Poetry Slam (WoWPS). Format In a poetry slam, members of the audience are chosen by a Master of ceremonies or host to act as judges for the event. In the national slam, there are five judges, but smaller slams generally have three. After each poet performs, each judge awards a score to that poem. Scores generally range between zero and ten. The highest and lowest score are dropped, giving each performance a rating between zero and thirty points. Before the competition begins, the host will often bring up a "sacrificial" poet, whom the judges will score in order to calibrate their judging. A single round at a standard slam consists of performances by all eligible poets. Most slams last multiple rounds, and many involve the elimination of lower-scoring poets in successive rounds. An elimination format might run 8-4-2; eight poets in the first round, four in the second, and two in the last. Some slams do not eliminate poets at all. The Green Mill usually runs its slams with six poets in the first round. At the end of the slam, the poet with the highest number of points earned is the winner. The Boston Poetry Slam takes a different approach; it uses the 8-4-2 three-round format, but the poets go head-to-head in separate bouts within the round. Props, costumes, and music are forbidden in slams, which differs greatly from its immediate predecessor, performance poetry. Hedwig Gorski, the founder of performance poetry as a distinct genre, saw props, costumes, and music as essential for a complete theatrical experience while also following theorist Jerzy Grotowski's Poor Theater by blurring lines between the real person, actor, and speakers in scripted literary art. Other rules for slams enforce a time limit of three minutes (and a grace period of ten seconds), after which a poet's score may be docked according to how long the poem exceeded the limit. Many youth slams, however, allow the poets up to three and a half minutes on stage. Competition types In an "Open Slam", the most