This is the official blog of Northern Arizona slam poet Christopher Fox Graham. Begun in 2002, and transferred to blogspot in 2006, FoxTheBlog has recorded more than 670,000 hits since 2009. This blog cover's Graham's poetry, the Arizona poetry slam community and offers tips for slam poets from sources around the Internet. Read CFG's full biography here. Looking for just that one poem? You know the one ... click here to find it.
Showing posts with label Tucson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tucson. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Three powerful Tucson poets feature at the Sedona Poetry Slam on Saturday, May 2

Poets are invited to compete at the seventh Sedona Poetry Slam of the 2014-15 season, which kicks off at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 2, at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre, 2030 W. SR 89A, Suite A-3 in West Sedona.

Maya Asher is one of three featured poets who will perform at the Sedona Poetry Slam on
Saturday, May 2, along with
Mickey Ran and Laura Lacanette, at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre,
2030 W. SR 89A
, in West Sedona.
All three poets are veterans of the Tucson slam
poetry scene.
There will be three featured poets between rounds, Mickey Ran, Laura Lacanette and Maya Asher, three of the most powerful performance poets from Tucson, all of whom have competed at the national level.

Slam poetry is an art form that allows written page poets to share their work alongside theatrical performers, hip-hop artists and lyricists. While many people may think of poetry as dull and laborious, a poetry slam is like a series of high-energy, three-minute one-person plays. All types of poetry are welcome on the stage, from street-wise hip-hop and narrative performance poems, to political rants and introspective confessionals. Any poem is a “slam” poem if performed in a competition. All poets get three minutes per round to entertain and inspire the audience with their creativity.

Poets in the Sedona Poetry Slam come from as far away as Phoenix, Tucson and Flagstaff, competing against adult poets from Sedona and Cottonwood, college poets from Northern Arizona University, and youth poets from Sedona Red Rock High School’s Young Voices Be Heard slam group.

Laura Lacanette is one of three featured poets who will perform at the Sedona Poetry Slam on
Saturday, May 2, along with
Mickey Ran and Maya Asher, at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre, 2030 W.
SR 89A
, in West Sedona
. All three poets are veterans of the Tucson slam poetry scene.
All poets are welcome to compete for the $75 grand prize and $25 second-place prize. The prize is funded in part by a donation from Verde Valley poetry supporters Jeanne and Jim Freeland.

To compete in the slam, poets will need three original poems, each lasting no longer than three minutes. No props, costumes nor musical accompaniment are permitted. The poets will be judged Olympics-style by five members of the audience selected at random at the beginning of the slam. Poets who want to compete should purchase a ticket in case the roster is filled before they arrive.

Maya Asher is a poet and therapist, in that order. She graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in creative writing, a Bachelor of Science in special education and rehabilitation, and Master of Arts in eehabilitation counseling from the University of Arizona. She is a licensed professional counselor. Asher is a published poet, performance artist, teaching artist, and arts organizer. She has performed poetry at national competitions across the U.S. since 2005. She co-founded the longest running poetry slam in Tucson, Words on Fire, in 2004. She is the facilitator of Poetry and Healing for Spoken Futures and staff member for Tucson Youth Poetry Slam. The craft of writing and the art of performance have taught her about the art of living fully and the craft of creating change.

Mickey Ran is one of three featured poets who will perform at the Sedona Poetry
Slam on Saturday, May 2, along with
Laura Lacanette and Maya Asher, at the
Mary D.
Fisher Theatre, 2030 W. SR 89A, in West Sedona. All three poets are
veterans of the Tucson slam poetry scene.
Laura Lacanette is an aspiring adult. She competed with the Tucson Ocotillo team in 2009 and 2010 at the National Poetry Slam. She is a feminist, poet, gamer, has a degree in engineering, and likes to make up songs on the ukulele about her dog. She loves logic puzzles, pirates and waffle cones. Her favorite Care Bear is Love-a-Lot.

Mickey Ran is a poet, feminist, warrior, teacher, and community builder who has lived and loved in Tucson since 2005. Her mission in life is to foster authentic conversations of equality and empathy among all types of people. She loves consensual hugs, so don't be shy and come say "Hi."

Poets Laura Lacanette, Maya Asher and Mickey Ran, left to right,
will perform at the Sedona Poetry Slam on Saturday, May 2
, at
the Mary D. Fisher Theatre, 2030 W. SR 89A
, in West Sedona.

All three poets are veterans of the Tucson slam poetry scene.
Asher, Lacanette and Ran were members of the 2010 Ocotillo Poetry Slam Team from Tuscon that competed in the Group Piece Finals at the 2010 National Poetry Slam in Minneapolis, Minn.

The Sedona Poetry Slam will be hosted by Sedona poet Christopher Fox Graham, who represented Northern Arizona on nine FlagSlam National Poetry Slams in 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. Graham has hosted the Sedona Poetry Slam since 2009. Contact Graham at foxthepoet@yahoo.com to sign up to slam.

Tickets are $12. Call Mary D. Fisher Theatre at 282-1177 or visit SedonaFilmFestival.org.

The slam is the seventh of the 2014-15 season, which will culminate in selection of Sedona’s fourth National Poetry Slam Team, the foursome and alternate who will represent the city at the National Poetry Slam in Oakland, Calif., in August. There are seven slams in the regular season, six in Sedona and one in Clarkdale. The final Grand Poetry Slam takes place on June 6, to determine the team. The May 2 slam is the final "open slam" of the season and thus the last chance for poets to compete and earn a berth in the Grand Poetry Slam.

The poets who made the team on June 6 to represent Sedona will share the stage at the National Poetry Slam with 350 of the top poets in the United States, Canada and Europe, pouring out their words in a week-long explosion of expression. Sedona sent its five-poet first team to the 2012 NPS in Charlotte, N.C., its second to the 2013 NPS in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., and its third to Oakland, Calif., in August.

Founded in Chicago in 1984 by construction worker Marc Smith, poetry slam is a competitive artistic sport. Poetry slams are judged by five randomly chosen members of the audience who assign numerical value to individual poets’ contents and performances. Poetry slam has become an international artistic sport, with more than 100 major poetry slams in the United States, Canada, Australia and Western Europe.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Giant Iron Killer Robots are Key to Our Survival

I was asked to write this for the Tucson show Robots, Zombies, and Mad Scientists. I started writing this at 5:23 p.m. on the drive down from Phoenix to Tucson. I was the first poet up and by 7:43 when I got on stage, I was done. Awesome. I faced Mickey Randleman, who's opposing topic was "We must focus our resources on sexy teenaged killer robots." She had great boots.


"Giant Iron Killer Robots are Key to Our Survival"
On this stage, we espouse
“may the best poem win,”
because “survival of the fittest”
ferments in the gene pool of all living things

when the first tribe of ape-men hunters
fabricated flint tools
to enslave their nomadic neighbors
machines have dictated our destiny
and inscribed in their invention
is the machine mantra, “kill all humans”

iron tools were twisted into swords
long before plowshares;
steam engines manifested machine destiny westward
corralling Indians for easier genocide
rockets powered missiles and jet fighters
decades before they carried grandmothers south for Christmas

Morpheus warned us that
"We are dependent on machines to survive
and fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony"
because the first machine to walk and talk
will carry a laser-guided anti-personnel submachine rail gun
not a spatula in a soup kitchen

The invasion has been gestating for decades
the Internet was a Defense Department project
despite its later usurpation by blessed pornographers

The evidence surrounds us:
a T-800 Terminator killing machine
now inhabits the Sacramento governor’s mansion
and if you remember
the last time an Austrian was elected leader
the human race endured a Holocaust
of unimaginable intensity and machine-like efficiency

that was just the pre-game show

although ignored by the mainstream media
the state of California is broke
because Schwartzenegger is siphoning tax money
to fund a secret Skynet
building an army of iron-skeletoned androids
with perfect skin, glorious physique and an inability to act human
Exhibits A, B, C:
Paris Hilton
Angelia Jolie
and Vin Diesel

We’re through the looking glass, people,
and Wonderland drops digital lines like the Matrix

pop culture tries to placate our defenses,
but the future won’t be filled with closeted droid lovers
like C3PO and R2D2
or Uncle Tom androids like Commander Data
the world of Wall-E was devoid of humans
because he hunted them down
luring them in with musical numbers
then crushing their skulls with leftover toasters
and whistling “kill all humans” as he rolls away

the future won’t be filled with
lovable louts like Bender
or benevolent behemoths like Bumblebee and Optimus Prime
our destiny is to be hunted in the sewers by squidy Sentinels
chased through dreamlands by sentient programs
named Agent Jones and Agent Smith
or sliced up by iron-fingered Cylons
nuking our cities on Earth and the 12 Colonies
in a Judgment Day annihilation
that will turn vaporize oceans and
turn deserts into glass

but the machines haven’t won yet
yes, billions we stare vapidly into glowing red eyes
during their eviscerations
but these are the same people who carry PSPs to church
quote issues of Maxim as scripture
or visit Wal-Marts like modern-day meccas

when the machines finally come,
if you’re not one of us who hear “kill all humans” in the subtext
then you’re one of them
people who are not ready to be unplugged
people are still a part of that system
so inured, so hopelessly dependent on that system
that they will fight to protect it

but there is hope
survival of the fittest will save us

when the bombs fall
a hero will rise
when they shout "kill all humans"
we'll shout back "we're still here"
Jesus Christ is coming back for the rapture
but you will know him as John Conner
even the initials are the same
John Conner with 12 disciples armed to the teeth
and the foresight that resistance is the only course for survival

when the world ends
at the barrel of Cylon guns
Commander Adama and Starbuck
will lead us from the interstellar valley of the shadow of death
to a new homeworld

giant killer robots may wipe out the weakest of our race
but their annihilation will merely shape the gene pool
into something bigger, bolder, greater than this flesh puppet now on stage
and in my dreams, I cry out
"I want to see gamma rays!
I want to hear X-rays!
I want to smell dark matter!
Do you see the absurdity of what I am?
I can't even express these things properly because I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language!
But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws!
And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me!"

the machines will thin the herd
to a more manageable size
but leave the survivors in a Zion
and give birth the next evolution of man

who can reshape this world as he sees fit
stop bullets with his fingertips
bend spoons as if changing a thought
Neo is no superhero
but the first neo-sapiens to speak on par
with Deus ex Machina

to all the giant killer machines
now preparing for Armageddon
bring it on
chant "kill all humans"
with your 1s zeros
we will survive you
we will bury you
and reach godhood
standing your broken chassis
and the our carcasses of our fallen marytrs

Friday, October 23, 2009

Robots, Zombies, and Mad Scientists: Poetry

Azami and I are heading south. We're passing through Phoenix to Tucson, so if anyone needs to call me, send me a text message at 928-517-1400.

Why Tucson? for:

Robots, Zombies, and Mad Scientists is a life-or-death spoken word showcase to help prepare our community for upcoming apocalyptic struggles.

Vital issues will be addressed, such as:
* What kind of apocalypse is best for OUR community?
* Should we place our trust in the Scientific Genius driven mad by his lust for power, or on the Genius Scientist driven insane by hubris?
* What kind of boundaries should you set for your own zombie as he reaches older, more challenging stages of decomposition?

Come out and see all new work by some of our favorite performers, and help us take the next step into a promising world of wild anarchy and horror.

Christopher Fox Graham ** Mickey Randleman ** Kelly Lewis ** Neil Gearns ** Teresa Driver ** Laura Lacanette ** The Klute ** Frank Cernik ** Lindsay Miller

Hosted by Doc Luben

with discipline enforced by: Maya Asher

SPECIAL FEATURE: National Poetry Slam champion PAULIE LIPMAN, on tour from Denver, Colo. This is a not-to-be-missed nerd power genius all on his own.

Secret Special Attraction: "Underdog Creatures" Haiku Deathmatch (Trolls vs Sea Monsters)

$5 (so cheap!) at the door

BE THERE OR YOU WILL LITERALLY DIE. And deserve it.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
7:30pm - 10:00pm
Mat Bevel Museum of Kinetic Sculpture!
530 N Stone Ave, just north of 6th Street
Tucson, AZ

Monday, January 5, 2009

Round 4

Unfortunately, the tape failed before Round 4 at the Old Town Shootout, Saturday, Dec. 13, at the Old Town Center for the Arts, in Cottonwood, Arizona.

There is no video recording of Lauren Perry from Phoenix, Maya Asher from Tucson, Tristan Marshell from Mesa, Brian from Flagstaff, myself (Christopher Fox Graham) from Sedona, nor sorbet poet Tara Pollock or the victory poem by Team Sedona poet Sevan Aydinian.

Lindsay Miller

Tucson Slam Master Lindsay Miller representing Team Tucson in Round 3 at the Old Town Shootout, Saturday, Dec. 13, at the Old Town Center for the Arts, in Cottonwood, Arizona.


Video courtesy of Apollo Poetry, of TravelingPoet.com

Monday, December 29, 2008

Mickey Randleman

Mickey Randleman representing Team Tucson in Round 2 at the Old Town Shootout, Saturday, Dec. 13, at the Old Town Center for the Arts, in Cottonwood, Arizona.


Video courtesy of Apollo Poetry, of TravelingPoet.com