SINGAPORE, 30 September 2003 — A young Singaporean man stands behind a microphone in the middle of an empty dance floor, nervously shuffling his feet as he begins a poetic rant on urination and mandatory army service.

The crowd cheers raucously when the poet reads his last line, as they recognize their own lives in his tale of military restrictions, squeaky clean bathrooms and overbearing grandmothers.

“There’s some fresh stuff here that I hadn’t heard before. The material is a bit racier and more interesting,” said Joshua Yap after he took his turn on stage at one of Singapore’s first poetry slams.

Other poets have bared their souls about sex, government and gay marriage in the tiny city state better known for its tight rein on expression and political dialogue.

Poetry slams, in which people perform their work and are judged by an audience, are new to Singapore. But the outspoken grassroots performances have emerged as the government considers loosening laws curbing freedom of speech that critics blame for the country’s immature arts scene.

Other art forms, such as theater, have also been testing new ground by discussing gender, sex and politics — subjects long considered taboo.

The government will “create space for artistic expression in the context of a multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-faceted society where considerations must be given to preserving social harmony,” Goh Ching Lee, a director at the government’s National Arts Council, said in an email message.

The R-rated play “Mardi Gras”, which deals with homosexuality in Singapore, was recently put on by Alvin Tan’s theater company the Necessary Stage.

Now that the government has indicated it is willing to relax rules, Tan said, it is up to Singaporeans to take the lead. “You can sense there is some kind of opening up, but I feel that more things have to be done among the people. We have to find a way to co-exist and get along, and not fall back on running to the government for solutions,” Tan said.

Poetry, which has a long history as a grassroots art form, may be the perfect way to bring about that dialogue. “Slamming” has gained international popularity with its colorful performances, audience interaction, and contemporary topics since its start in Chicago in the mid-1980s.

That such a public art form, where the bawdiest poems often score the highest points with the audience, has taken root in Singapore is no surprise to poetry slam’s founder Marc Smith.

“Ironies abound in the slam community, this is just one more to add to the list,” Smith said in an e-mail message.

Chris Mooney-Singh organized Singapore’s first poetry slam in May, and since then has been hosting events on a monthly basis at Velvet Underground, one of the city’s swankiest night clubs.

The fashionable club has little in common with the dark and smoky Green Mill Tavern in Chicago where slamming began, but there is keen interest in seeing largely unknown writers stand up and perform in a competitive setting. “You have a country of people that are well educated and travelled, and it’s just a matter of time before they express themselves more. It’s a natural progression,” Mooney-Singh said.

Singapore’s performances have so far been less raucous than those in the United States, and politics rarely surface in the poems, but Mooney-Singh said this was all part of creating Singapore’s unique version of the art form.

“People in a place like America would be more outspoken. Politics and culture in Singapore are more reserved, and so by nature poets in a society like that will also be more reserved.”

But performers are throwing off some inhibitions, as demonstrated by a poem read at one slam that told an imaginary tale of Goh Chok Tong, the country’s prime minister, going bartop dancing, an activity that was outlawed until recently.

“Slams will be different wherever they are held, and that’s good, because if they were all like the American ones it would be pretty boring,” Mooney-Singh said.