Button Poetry is committed to developing a coherent and effective system of production, distribution, promotion and fundraising for spoken word and performance poetry.
We seek to showcase the power and diversity of voices in our community. By encouraging and broadcasting the best and brightest performance poets of today, we hope to broaden poetry's audience, to expand its reach and develop a greater level of cultural appreciation for the art form.
With 2023 in the rear-view mirror and
2024 underway, the Sedona Poetry Slam enters its 15th season (but 16th year!) of
performance poets bringing high-energy, competitive spoken word to
the Mary D. Fisher Theatre starting at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 13.
Between rounds, Salt Lake City spoken
word powerhouse R.J. Walker will perform a featured set.
A poetry slam is like a series of
high-energy, three-minute one-person plays, judged by the audience.
Anyone can sign up to compete in the slam for the $75 grand prize and $25 second-place prize.
R.J. Walker
RJ Walker is a performance poet and voice actor from Salt Lake City, Utah. Walker has performed at the National Poetry Slam numerous times, representing Salt Lake City and Sugar House Utah. At the Individual World Poetry Slam he was a showcased poet on final stage and placed sixth overall at the 2017 Individual world poetry slam.
Walker won the NPS Spirit of the Slam
award for organizing the first Compliment Deathmatch event.
The next
year he placed fourth at the National Poetry Slam with the Salt City
Unified team.
He is a winner of the Button Poetry video contest.
In Salt Lake City, Walker is the host and operator of
The Greenhouse Effect Open Mic, SLC’s longest running open mic
style event. Walker is a TEDX SLC speaker and was a keynote speaker
for the League of Utah Writers’ Quills Conference.
>Outside of poetry, Walker has narrated
over 30 audiobooks, designed escape rooms, written murder mystery
adventures, designed alternate reality games that take players on
adventures through the urban exploration of Salt Lake City and
written five produced plays for Salt Lake Community College, Wasatch
Theatre Company and The Utah Arts Alliance.
He is an Irene
Ryan-nominated actor and an ACTF finalist in playwriting. He is also
a runner up for the ACTF devised theatre competition.
Currently on the creative team for The
Box theatre, Walker serves as a playwright in residence and is the
executive director of Lords of Misrule theatre company which pioneers
mutual-aid focused theatre arts.
Open Slam
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
are judged Olympics-style by five members of the audience selected at
random at the beginning of the slam.
Slam poetry is an art form that allows
written page poets to share their work alongside theatrical
performers, hip-hop artists and lyricists. Poets 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. 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.
Mary D. Fisher Theatre is located at
2030 W. SR 89A, Suite A-3, in West Sedona. Tickets are $12. For
tickets, call 282-1177 or visit SedonaFilmFestival.org.
The next poetry slams of the season
will be held on Saturdays, Feb. 3; March 9; April 13, featuring Briana Grace Hammerstrom of Portland. Ore., by way of Flagstaff, May
11 and finally on June 8.
The prize money is funded in part by a
donation from Verde Valley poetry supporters Jeanne and Jim Freeland.
Email foxthepoet@yahoo.com to sign up
early to compete or by the Friday before the slam or at the door the
day of the slam. Poets who want to compete should purchase a ticket
in case the roster is filled before they arrive.
>For more information, visit
sedonafilmfestival.com or foxthepoet.blogspot.com. a href="https://www.azpoet.com/" target="_blank">For a full list of
slam poetry events in Arizona, visit azpoet.com.
What is Poetry Slam?
Founded at the Green Mill Tavern in
Chicago in 1984 by Marc Smith, poetry slam is a competitive artistic
sport designed to get people who would otherwise never go to a poetry
reading excited about the art form when it becomes a high-energy
competition. 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. Slam poets have opened
at the Winter Olympics, performed at the White House and at the
United Nations General Assembly and were featured on "Russell
Simmons' Def Poets" on HBO.
Sedona has sent four-poet teams to
represent the city at the National Poetry Slam in Charlotte, N.C.,
Boston, Cambridge, Mass., Oakland, Calif., Decatur, Ga., Denver and
Chicago.
like the first time you set eyes on the first love of your life
as they were just walking down the street
put me in the distance
where you can riddle rumors out about my existence
like maybe the mighty Mike McGee will say
"I heard that Danny was kidnapped
by a renegade Amazon tribe in the Amazon
and they took him under their wing
so now his blowgun skills
phhhhhhhhhhhhhhhwop!
are impeccable"
See when I'm in the distance myth-making it ain't gonna be my job anymore
it'll be yours
and I think it would be just what the doctor ordered
if I was in the distance so long
that there was a band of Danny impersonators
running the streets of Providence
like quicksand horses
that everyone's eyes could just sort of sink into
and I feel it like our hearts are all in the distance
pumping vision into our blood and blood back into our vision
distance is being able to see things from the inside out
distance is where the future grows
distance puts the marrow in tomorrow
distance is what I want to eat for breakfast
it's the bullseye tattooed the inside of my solar plexus
and only the sunset can pierce it
so CR when I'm gone
I'll be gone
my back would be turned
by the time y'all's arrows are drawn
the distance that I'm all wrapped up in
will put the potential energy in your quiver
distance is the backbone in my swagger
and the twang in my stupid honesty
see without the distance my gunslingers wrists
hang lifeless with arthritis at my sides
and gypsy of my lips forgets how to kiss the sky
without the distance
some nights I grind my wisdom teeth into a fine powder
and I lace my cigarette other nights
I use it
to fill the empty hour glasses
I put them in the world
where things always get turned upside down
to feel like I have more time
I do headstands
on escalators
I'll hit my spirit with the reflex hammer
just to see if its knee jerks
I get used to the different-day same T-shirt
I'll play with symbols and reverse and reverse till I bleed earth
listen, these words are patchwork nothing
I left my patchworks right between West 4th and Bleecker
so now I band up the box
of the past
with a blindfold on
I'll keep tomorrow a breath away
and break dawn like an egg across the home of your hate
because distance
is a dynamite psycho static patchwork matchstick stuck on motion
and I'm a riverstone explosion
a chiseled whisperin' echo crumbling in on itself
a clover grown its fourth leaf
check your kinetics
check my kinetics
striking lightning off the Braille of our pulse
put me in the distance and I will go
I will go to the pawn shop at the end of the universe
where the pawn shop owner
keeps his beard in check
with that razor blade you may have traded in for a second chance
and he'll look at me
from behind those elusive crossed arms
and that wayward smile
that pawn shop owners often have
and I'll just take a look around
I'll see the angel wings slung up on the walls
and all of our old dreams
bottled in jars on shelves
that slant for the weight
until I realized that this
is as far as I can go
I'll move the distance out of the way
walk up to that pawn shop owner and say:
"listen, I've got a great story
it's about a spirit
trying to find his way
back to his bones
and I'm willing to trade it in
just so long as you can give me directions
on how to get back home"
Danny Sherrard wows the crowd at the Applesauce Teahouse in Flagstaff in November 2007
Born in Seattle, Washington on August 29, 1985, Sherrand he won the Individual National Poetry Slam competition in 2007, becoming the youngest competitor at that time to win such a title. In 2008 Sherrard won France's Poetry World Cup where he competed against national champions from 15 countries.
Sherrard was on the Seattle poetry slam teams in 2007 and 2008 and the 2009 HawaiiSlam team.
At the beginning of 2009 Danny Sherrard toured with the spoken word group The Spilljoy Ensemble composed of himself, Jon Sands, Shira Erlichman and Ken Arkind.
Sherrard's first book, "Cast Your Eyes like River Stones into the Exquisite Dark," was released in 2009 through Write Bloody Publishing.
