Also, your HTML is messed up in that Wikipedia link, and while the novel sounds intriguing, I think I'm missing what it has to do with poetry readings.

The HTML should now be fixed. I think the connection comes from a longstanding association between the fictional slans and real-life fandom:

SF fans were quick to empathize with Jommy, a persecuted loner surrounded by hateful, intolerant intellectual inferiors, but destined for power and glory due to his scientific savvy and superior brain. The catchphrase "Fans are slans!" quickly became a rallying cry for SF fandom, in particular for Claude Degler's infamous fan-separatist Cosmic Circle. Slan was a major part of the burgeoning semi-defensive sense of superiority among SF fans, the same attitude that persists in separatist fan slang terms like "mundanes" even today.

(I didn't even know that there were separatist fans, but there you go . . .) Consequently, a poetry slam perpetrated by science-fiction fans is a poetry slan. Even if some of the poetry in question is fantastic rather than science-fictional, such as the poem which I plan on reading.

Any chance you'll be in attendance?