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Saturday, October 14, 2023

"The Minister of Loneliness" by Sarah Kay

 "The Minister of Loneliness" by Sarah Kay 

at Gray Area in San Francisco, Calif.
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About Button:

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.

Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Salt Lake City poetry slam powerhouse R.J. Walker features at Sedona Poetry Slam on Jan. 13

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.

Sunday, October 8, 2023

"The Distance" by Danny Sherrard

 

"The Distance"

by Danny Sherrard


put me in the distance 
now if you guys don't know
the Distance 
it's out there 

it's kind of like where the truth has this way 
of answering all your questions 
without even having to speak 
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.