On April 6th, 2017, people got together at Kick Butt Coffee, which hosted the Adult Slam on the first day of the 25 year anniversary of the Austin International Poetry Festival on 4/6/17. Janet Kuypers was asked to co-host this event with Mike Thompson, and since there was room for the competing poets during the slam, Janet Kuypers chose to read her poems “Death Takes Many Forms” in round one and “Fantastic Car Crash” in round two. (Because of filming difficulties, there is only video of the first poem reading for “Death Takes Many Forms”.)     Janet Kuypers believed that it would not be right to take an award if she was also hosting the event, so she decided that no matter what the final scores were, she would choose not not take an award.     Below are video links and poem writing links from April 6th 2017 (4/6/17, or 20170406), where Janet Kuypers performed her poem “Death Takes Many Forms” — because there was a 3 minute time limit for the poem reading (and “Death Takes Many Forms” probably takes close to 5 minutes to read), she edited the poem so it would be three minutes ong for her to read the poem in the competition.

Janet Kuypers 4/6/17 performs her poem “Death Takes Many Forms” in the Austin Adult Slam she co-hosted See YouTube video 4/6/17 of Janet Kuypers performing her poem “Death Takes Many Forms” within 3 minutes during the Austin Adult Slam at Kick Butt Coffee (from a Canon Power Shot SX7000, cropped, given a hard light). See YouTube video 4/6/17 of Janet Kuypers performing her poem “Death Takes Many Forms” within 3 minutes during the Adult Slam in the Austin International Poetry Society at Kick Butt Coffee (Canon Power Shot SX7000).

Janet Kuypers did NOT win the third place trophy; even though she competed, she co-hosted this event with Mike Thompson, so she chose to not accept a trophy (even if her scores were high enough to warrant a trophy). Because she did not have an image of the trophy, she asked the 3rd place winner is she would take a picture with it, and the winner suggested that Janet should wear the ribbon as well.