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 Saul Williams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saul Williams. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Slam poetry gets the "Colbert Bump" thanks to Steven Colbert's interview of Saul Williams


A leading voice on the spoken-word scene, Saul Williams began astonishing open mic audiences with his impassioned tongue-twisting verse in the mid-1990s and eventually became a grand slam champion at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. 

In 1996, he led the four-person New York team to the finals of the National Poetry Slam competition, a fierce battle of verse that was chronicled in the documentary film "Slamnation." Two years later, in a role that featured many of his own compositions, Williams played an imprisoned street poet in the award-winning film, Slam, for which Esquire magazine deemed him a "dreadlocked dervish of words."

A self-proclaimed disciple of Bob Kaufman and Amiri Baraka, Williams combines the rhythms and themes of Beat and Black Arts poets in his work. His three collections of poetry--The Seventh Octave, Sãhe, and , said the shotgun to the head--tackle difficult social and political issues as well as intangible questions about religion and spirituality. In performance, his work is full of a pulsing frenzy, which the New York Times described as "mind-twisting cosmic rumination with hallucinatory science-fiction scenarios that the poet delivers with an incantatory fervor."

The undeniable beat in the poet's work led to an inevitable transition to music. Initially, he collaborated with DJs and hip-hop artists, reciting his verse to their backbeat. In 2001, he recorded his own album, Amethyst Rock Star, co-produced by Rick Rubin, the legendary producer of Public Enemy, Run DMC, the Beastie Boys, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as the co-founder of the record label Def Jam with hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons. In 2004, Williams released the self-titled album Saul Williams, for which, as he explained, he approached the music as a musician, not as a spoken-word artist. "The last [album] was about poetry over beats," he said in a recent interview, "and this is about the songs."

Despite his shift toward songwriting, the words are still of utmost importance to Williams. Demonstrating a political consciousness through his poems and songs is vital. He feels the current hip-hop culture has departed from the thought-provoking work of such artists as Public Enemy and De La Soul to a more inane preoccupation with materialism and a dangerous tolerance of what he calls "bullshit lyricism." He warns against the dangerous and passive acceptance of these negative lyrics transmitted through an infectious beat: "You start building a tolerance," he explained. "Because when you nod your head to a beat, you nod your head affirmatively."

On his own records, Williams has managed to marry hip-hop beats with sober lyrics. "Amethyst Rock Star has to do with the fact that when you're tuned into your spirit you realize that we are all stars by birth," the poet has said. "That's our birthright, literally." The band accompanying him is comprised of a violinist, a cellist, a bass player, a keyboard player, a DJ, and a drummer, resulting in an album that the Times of London named "Album of the Year."

The album Saul Williams was influenced by a wide range of artists including Jimmy Hendrix, Radiohead, and the Mars Volta, and resulted in a fusion that Williams calls "industrial punk hop." Brian Orloff, writing in Rolling Stone magazine, explained: "Musically, Saul Williams matches Williams's lyrics with gritty, frittered guitar and urgent rhythms. 'List of Demands (Reparations)' finds Williams singing, "I gotta list of demands written on the palm of my hands' over a staccato guitar riff that sounds like gunfire.'"

"I'm definitely a hip-hop head by nature," Williams has said. "I'm there in the mix, so I'm turned on by the same things, nod my head to the same things. Even if I'm writing a piece of prose, there is still an intrinsic rhythm that I'm looking for, even without rhyme, even without beats, even without music and microphones."

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

National Poetry Month: "Coded Language" by Saul Williams



Coded Language
by Saul Williams
 
Whereas breakbeats have been the missing link
Connecting the diasporic community to its drum-woven past

Whereas the quantized drum has allowed the whirling
Mathematicians to calculate the ever changing distance
Between rock and stardom

Whereas the velocity of the spinning vinyl
Cross-faded, spun backwards and re-released
At the same given moment of recorded history
Yet at a different moment in times continuum
Has allowed history, to catch up with the present

We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing
Standards of dialog, statements such as "Keep it real"
Especially when punctuating or anticipating modes
Of ultraviolence inflicted psychologically or physically or depicting
An unchanging rule of events will hence forth be seen as retro-active
And not representative of the individually determined is

Furthermore, as determined by the collective consciousness
Of this state of being and the lessened distance
Between thought patterns and their secular manifestations
The role of men as listening receptacles is to be increased by a number
No less than 70 percent of the current enlisted as vocal aggressors

Motherfuckers better realize now is the time to self-actualize
We have found evidence that hip-hop's standard 85 rpm
When increased by a number as least half the rate of its standard
Or decreased at three quarters of its speed
May be a determining factor in heightening consciousness

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face
Of the unchanging the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth
Equate rhyme with reason, sun with season, our cyclical relationship
To phenomenon has encouraged scholars
To erase the centers of periods thus symbolizing the non-linear
Character of 'cause and effect reject mediocrity

Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that
Which as been given for you to understand
The current standard is the equivalent
Of an adolescent restricted to the diet of an infant
The rapidly changing body would acquire dysfunctional
And deformative symptoms and could not properly mature
On a diet of apple sauce and crushed pears

Light years are interchangeable with years of living in darkness
The role of darkness is not to be seen as or equated with ignorance
But with the unknown and the mysteries of the unseen
Thus, in the name of
Robeson, God's Son, Hurston, Ahkenaton
Hatsheput, Blackfoot, Helen, Lennon, Kahlo
Kali, The Three Marias, Tara, Lilith, Lorde
Whitman, Baldwin, Ginsberg, Kaufman, Lumumba

Ghandi, Gibran, Shabazz, Shabazz, Siddhartha
Medusa, Guevara, Gurdjieff, Rand, Wright, Banneker
Tubman, Hamer, Holiday, Davis, Coltrane
Morrison, Joplin, Du Bois, Clarke, Shakespeare

Rachmaninov, Ellington, Carter, Gaye, Hathaway
Hendrix, Kuti, Dickerson, Riperton, Mary, Isis
Teresa, Hansberry, Tesla, Plath, Rumi, Fellini
Michaux, Nostradamus, Nefertiti, La Rock, Shiva

Ganesha, Yemaja, Oshun, Obatala, Ogun, Kennedy
King, four little girls, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Keller
Biko, Perón, Marley, Magdalene, Cosby, Shakur
Those who burnt, those still aflamed and the countless unnamed

We claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter
We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun
We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us
We are determining the future at this very moment
We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone

Our music is our alchemy, we stand as the manifested
Equivalent of three buckets of water and a hand full of minerals
Thus realizing that those very buckets turned upside down
Supply the percussion factor of forever, if you must count
To keep the beat then count

Find you mantra and awaken your subconscious
Curve you circles counterclockwise, use your cipher to decipher
Coded Language, manmade laws, climb waterfalls and trees
Commune with nature, snakes and bees let your children
Name themselves and claim themselves as the new day, for today

We are determined to be the channelers of these changing
Frequencies into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama
Photography, carpentry, crafts, love and love, we enlist every instrument
Acoustic, electronic every so called race, gender and sexual preference
Every person as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility
To uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking world

Any utterance unaimed will be disclaimed
Will be named Two Rappers Slain
Any utterance unaimed will be disclaimed
Will be named Two Rappers Slain






Copyright © Saul Williams


A leading voice on the spoken-word scene, Saul Williams began astonishing open mic audiences with his impassioned tongue-twisting verse in the mid-1990s and eventually became a grand slam champion at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. 

In 1996, he led the four-person New York team to the finals of the National Poetry Slam competition, a fierce battle of verse that was chronicled in the documentary film "Slamnation." Two years later, in a role that featured many of his own compositions, Williams played an imprisoned street poet in the award-winning film, Slam, for which Esquire magazine deemed him a "dreadlocked dervish of words."

A self-proclaimed disciple of Bob Kaufman and Amiri Baraka, Williams combines the rhythms and themes of Beat and Black Arts poets in his work. His three collections of poetry--The Seventh Octave, Sãhe, and , said the shotgun to the head--tackle difficult social and political issues as well as intangible questions about religion and spirituality. In performance, his work is full of a pulsing frenzy, which the New York Times described as "mind-twisting cosmic rumination with hallucinatory science-fiction scenarios that the poet delivers with an incantatory fervor."

The undeniable beat in the poet's work led to an inevitable transition to music. Initially, he collaborated with DJs and hip-hop artists, reciting his verse to their backbeat. In 2001, he recorded his own album, Amethyst Rock Star, co-produced by Rick Rubin, the legendary producer of Public Enemy, Run DMC, the Beastie Boys, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as the co-founder of the record label Def Jam with hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons. In 2004, Williams released the self-titled album Saul Williams, for which, as he explained, he approached the music as a musician, not as a spoken-word artist. "The last [album] was about poetry over beats," he said in a recent interview, "and this is about the songs."

Despite his shift toward songwriting, the words are still of utmost importance to Williams. Demonstrating a political consciousness through his poems and songs is vital. He feels the current hip-hop culture has departed from the thought-provoking work of such artists as Public Enemy and De La Soul to a more inane preoccupation with materialism and a dangerous tolerance of what he calls "bullshit lyricism." He warns against the dangerous and passive acceptance of these negative lyrics transmitted through an infectious beat: "You start building a tolerance," he explained. "Because when you nod your head to a beat, you nod your head affirmatively."

On his own records, Williams has managed to marry hip-hop beats with sober lyrics. "Amethyst Rock Star has to do with the fact that when you're tuned into your spirit you realize that we are all stars by birth," the poet has said. "That's our birthright, literally." The band accompanying him is comprised of a violinist, a cellist, a bass player, a keyboard player, a DJ, and a drummer, resulting in an album that the Times of London named "Album of the Year."

The album Saul Williams was influenced by a wide range of artists including Jimmy Hendrix, Radiohead, and the Mars Volta, and resulted in a fusion that Williams calls "industrial punk hop." Brian Orloff, writing in Rolling Stone magazine, explained: "Musically, Saul Williams matches Williams's lyrics with gritty, frittered guitar and urgent rhythms. 'List of Demands (Reparations)' finds Williams singing, "I gotta list of demands written on the palm of my hands' over a staccato guitar riff that sounds like gunfire.'"

"I'm definitely a hip-hop head by nature," Williams has said. "I'm there in the mix, so I'm turned on by the same things, nod my head to the same things. Even if I'm writing a piece of prose, there is still an intrinsic rhythm that I'm looking for, even without rhyme, even without beats, even without music and microphones." 




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Monday, December 31, 2012

My Biggest Events of 2012

The year 2012 was busy, with both highs and lows. These are neither the best nor worst the biggest events of my year:

Confirming ballistics from double murder outside Sedona

The morning of Friday, Jan. 6, James Johnson, 63, from Jaffrey, N.H., and Carol Raynsford, 63, from Nelson, N.H., were found shot to death in an idling late-model red Subaru wagon around 11:30 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 6, at an overlook between Sedona and Cottonwood. There hasn't been a murder inside Sedona city limits since 2003.

Photo by ABC15 News
On Sunday, Jan. 8, a shootout in Anthem resulted in the death of Maricopa County Sheriff's Office deputy William Coleman, a 20-year veteran of MCSO and father of two.

The suspect, Drew Ryan Maras, 30, fired 29 rounds at police, two of which killed Coleman. Deputies fired 41 rounds, killing Maras.

The weapons that killed Jaffrey, Raynsford and Coleman were all .223-caliber rounds.

We, at the Sedona Red Rock News, were trying to get confirmation of a ballistics match between the two shootings, but the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office couldn't confirm it.

A tragedy, like this, means something different to a journalist. While we feel compassion for the victims of violent crimes or bank frauds and assaults and identify as fellow humans to those in feature stories or obituaries, reporting the news is our job. Reporting this story, and doing it before anyone else in the Verde Valley means I was doing my job for my community.We went to press suggesting there might be a relation, but 15 minutes to deadline on Tuesday, Jan. 10, I happened across a Twitter post from a New Jersey news site confirming the connection. My editor was out of the office, so the onus fell on me. I shouted "stop the presses!" had my photojournalist Tom Hood checking my email every 20 seconds while I called MCSO over and over until I got verbal confirmation and Hood got a press release from MCSO verifying the ballistics. I rewrote the lead with just a minute to spare and sent the plate the press, effectively breaking the story locally connecting the two shootings.

There is still no motive in the two deaths near Sedona.




May photo shoot

In May, following a Sedona Poetry Slam, a got a group of my best poets to stay overnight.

Photo by Tara Graeber
Josh Wiss, Spencer Troth, me, Brian Walker, Azami, Nodalone, Valence and
Lauren Hanss, left to right, helped encapsulate Arizona's Wild West and sci-fi
motifs.
The next morning, we went out to Fay Canyon and shot a series of photos blending Firefly imagery with the Old West, with images shot by Tara Graeber.

Hikers to the site came across a dozen armed poets and artists adjacent to the trailhead. Seeing there reaction to poets like Josh Wiss with three pistols and Valence wearing heterochromic sunglasses, my trenchcoat and a wielding a rusty shotgun must have been terrifying, then hilarious.

Of course, readers of my blog have seen the results of these pics as they are my favorites.



Publishing my first bound book, "The Opposite of Camouflage"

In late May, I started working on my first bound book of poetry, publishing it through Lulu.com, a print on demand service.

I hadn't printed a new book of my poems since 2006 and I've become a much better poet since then. It has 16 poems in a 52-page bound book, available for $9.99.

Poems included:
  • Welcome to the Church of the Word
  • Manifesto of an Addict
  • We Call Him Papa
  • Spinal Language
  • Ragnarok
  • The Peach
  • Breakfast Cereal
  • In the Corners of This Room
  • Three Minutes for Dylan
  • Do You Have a Baseball Bat?
  • My Hands are in the Mail
  • The Devil’s Gardens
  • Revolution 2.0
  • Staring at the Milky Way with One Eye Closed
  • Dear Pluto
  • They Held Hands
Special thanks to Big Pappa E for suggesting the title.




Winning the FlagSlam Grand Slam in May

Photo by Tara Graeber
The FlagSlam Grand Poetry Slam competitors: Tara Pollock, Ryan Brown,
Spencer Troth, me, Valence, Dan Rivera, Evan Dissinger, Josh Wiss, Nancy,
Nodalone, Vincent Vega and Jackson Morris. Pollock, Brown, I, Nodalone and
Morris made the team.

The last time I was legitimately on a team was 2006.

In 2010, I was added to my fifth Flagstaff team because I had competed and happened to be going to Nationals as a volunteer and the team's fourth poet bailed.

But in 2012, after a year of competing every week, despite living 40 minutes away in Sedona, I won the FlagSlam Grand Slam, making the team with Ryan Brown, Tara Pollock and Nodalone, and our alternate Jackson Morris, who we almost immediately made a fifth member of the team, as permitted by Poetry Slam Inc. rules.

The team was super supportive and incredibly talented, probably the strongest team of poets since the inaugural team in 2001.




First Sedona Grand Slam in June; performing with Azami

In 2011, The Klute suggested I send a team from Sedona to the National Poetry Slam.
I scrambled in to get in six poetry slams between December and May, meeting the threshold to qualify for inclusion in the National Poetry Slam, paid venue registration and certification for Studio Live and set up a point system to encourage poets to participate. 

Members of the Sedona Poetry Slam Team, left to right, Frank O'Brien, Spencer
Troth, Evan Dissinger, Tyler “Valence” Sirvinskas and Josh Wiss stand on stage
after their first National Poetry Slam bout at the McGlohon Theatre in Charlotte,
N.C. The team came in third, losing to Portland, Ore., and Oklahoma City, but
defeating Springfield, Mo.
In June, I hosted the first ever Sedona Poetry Grand Slam, featuring in alphabetical order:
  • Evan Dissinger is one of the preeminent voices in the Flagstaff poetry scene. A skateboard rat in Flagstaff, Dissinger is one of the most sincere poets in Arizona with a knack for making conventional experiences sublime.
  • Lauren Hanss is one of the strong female voices in Flagstaff. An early education and creative writing student at NAU, Hanss is respected for her honest, confessional poetry.
  • Known for his political savvy and humorous poetry, The Klute performs all over the United States and Canada and featured at the Poetry Slam and the Sedona Public Library. A seasoned veteran, The Klute has been to the National Poetry Slam seven times, for the Mesa Slam Team in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2006, and the Phoenix Slam Team in 2008, 2009 and 2010. He also won the grand slams in 2005 and 2010.
  • A poet’s poet, Frank O’Brien writes with a profound simplicity. O’Brien won the 2008 and 2009 Flagstaff Grand Slams, and competed at three national poetry slams from 2008 to 2010.
  • A veteran national competitor, Lauren Perry competed at the National Poetry Slam with the Mesa Poetry Slam Team in 2006, 2009 and 2010. She also proudly represented Sedona at the 2012 Women of the World Poetry Slam in Denver.
  • Austin Reeves is an up-and-coming voice in both Sedona and Flagstaff. A coffee-loving creative writing student at NAU, Reeves has already made an impact, taking second at the last Sedona Poetry Slam in May.
  • Beginning in Flagstaff in 2005, Rowie Shebala has slammed all over Arizona. After graduating from NAU with a Bachelors of Science in Theater and a minor in English, she hosted the poetry slam in Gallup, N.M. On the national level, she competed at the 2009 Women of the World Poetry Slam in Detroit and as a member of the Mesa Slam Team in 2011.
  • Tyler Sirvinskas aka Valence, was a member of the 2011 Flagstaff National Poetry Slam team. He is the top-ranked poet competing in the Sedona grand slam.
  • A political science student at NAU, Spencer Troth’s introspective work brings compassion to his views of current events, such as a poem touching on the double murder outside Sedona in January. Troth will be taking his poetic voice overseas as a political science student in France next year.
  • Mikel Weisser is a school teacher from Kingman, an Occupy activist and a 2012 candidate for Arizona’s Congressional District 4. In conjunction with his congressional campaign and activist activities, Weisser schedules poetry performances all over the state.
  • Part of the performance included a duo poem featuring me
    performing "[The Dust] In the Corners of this Room" with my
    then-girlfriend Azami dancing to the piece.
  • Joshua Wiss’ infectious enthusiasm for life is evident in his energetic performances. A recent graduate of NAU with a degree in creative writing, Wiss performed at every Sedona Poetry Slam this season and is currently ranked No. 2.
Part of the performance included a duo poem featuring me performing "[The Dust] In the Corners of this Room" with my then-girlfriend Azami dancing to the piece.

That was awesome.


The 2012 Sedona National Poetry Slam Team members were chosen: Valence, Evan Dissinger, Josh Wiss, Frank O'Brien and Spenser Troth




Desert Rocks Music Festival

The Apocalypse Slam, The Dust and Whiskey Slam,The Hunger Slam, whatever the 12 poets who participated wanted to call it, it was a struggle but awesome when all was said and done.

Notice the lack of green on the underlying map. The festival was dust, just
dust.
The slam itself was great, the camaraderie between those of us who went will last for years, because performing slam poems in the face of 50-mile-an-hour dusty gusts will make you tight with each other. Misery loves company.

Hanging out with Seth Walker, Solomon Schneider and some of the best slam poets in the country was worth all the heartache of going and competing:
  • Karen Neverland was a member of the Salt City Slam Team in 2010 and has featured at many venues around the Salt Lake area with her poetry and motivational speaking. She has been featured on KRCL’s RadioActive and City Weekly’s Zionized and has recently completed a full-length philosophy book (unpublished). Karen has also self-published three chapbooks of poetry and often performs under the nickname “Karo”. In her free time she runs Salt Lake City’s most successful open microphone at Greenhouse Effect and enjoys creating music. 
  • Amy Everhart has been called one of "America's most refreshing Poetic Voices", a whirling-dervish of a performer whose voice sucker punched itself into the National Consciousness when she made history in Berkley California on October 10th, 2009 by being the first Woman to ever win the Individual World Poetry Slam, the most highly coveted title in United States performance poetry.
  •  Will Stanford is co-founder of Sparrow Ghost Publishing and Collective, a hair-stylist in training, hst of Portland Poetry Slam, Word-Out and Broetry. I write poems and do hoodrat stuff with my friends. Also, he performed a poem naked.
  • Slam scores posted during the Desert Rock Music Festival.
  • Jackhammer Serenade is composed of Dre Johnson and Patrick Ohslund and was born of fire and incalculable odds as these two poets converged from vastly different backgrounds on the 2009 poetry team Life Sentence. Since then they have given themselves entirely to multi voice work in order to further the human experiment of melding consciousness.
    Their work is at once tongue and cheek combined with a biting no-nonsense social commentary on the unseen suffering going on in the urban world.
  • Jesse Parent is a poet, an improviser, a former mixed martial arts fighter, a computer nerd, a husband, a father, and, above all, a human being. According to the results of the 2010 and 2011 Individual World Poetry Slams, he is also the 2nd ranked slam poet in the world.
  • Jordan Ranft loves poetry. He loves writing it, and he loves performing it. In the few years he has been practicing his craft he has taken the scene by storm. First starting performance career out in Colorado Jordan placed several times at the Mercury Cafe Slam in Denver. Now residing in northern California he has performed all over the bay area, won multiple slams, and has featured at several big name events including the Northbay Poetry Slam and the San Francisco How Weird Street Fair.
  • Lauren Zuniga is a nationally touring poet, teaching artist and activist. She is one of the top 5 ranked female poets in the world, the 2012 Activist-in-Residence at the OU Center for Social Justice and the founder of Oklahoma Young Writers. MoveOn.org, called her poem "The most riveting message on the war on women in under three minutes." Her work has also featured in On the Issues Magazine, Daily Kos, Crooks and Liars, Being Liberal, RH Reality Check, Muzzle Magazine, The Good Things About America and The Gayly.
  • Gray Brian Thomas is a performance poet born and raised in Salt Lake City Utah. Graduating cum laude with a B.A. in English in 2012 from the University of Utah where he was editor of enormous rooms, the undergraduate literary journal, Gray has been writing and performing poetry for several years. He was a member of the 2007, and 2011 Salt City Slam teams, and is a current member of the 2012 Salt City Slam team. He helped found the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational team for the University of Utah, which sent it's first ever representatives to the 2012 CUPSI tournament. Gray is also the 2012 Individual World Poetry Slam representative for Salt Lake City, which will take place later this year in Fayettville, Ark.
  • Lacey Roop is a nationally recognized and touring poet placing 6th in the 2011 Women of the World Poetry Slam (WOWPS), was the Austin, TX Individual World Poetry Slam (IWPS) representative, and has been a two-time member of the renowned Austin Poetry Slam.
    What is far more interesting about Lacey, however, is that she has an uncanny ability to get hit by cars while biking, finds the fact that we are all made of stars both fascinating and comforting, and wears a key around her neck that unlocks the bottom of the ocean. Really, it does.
  • The rapper Progress.
  • Lilly Fangz
  • Me 
And we got to see Beats Antique, Brother Ali, and the winners, Jackhammer Serenade, opened for the Wailers.




    Copperstate Poetry Slam

    Valence, Josh Wiss, Evan Dissinger, and
    Frank O'Brien show off the 2012 Copperstate
    Poetry Slam trophy they won as the Sedona
    National Poetry Slam Team.
    The Copperstate Poetry Slam brought together poetry slam teams from all over Arizona. Flagstaff was rocking it, but Nodalone and I dropped our duo "Babies" and effectively threw the slam.

    My Sedona boys, however, rocked it and took home the trophy.

    Spenser Troth was in Los Angeles getting visa from the French consulate for a future study abroad course and coun't attend. The rest of the 2012 Sedona National Poetry Slam Team Valence, Evan Dissinger, Josh Wiss, Frank O'Brien

    After Nationals, the team chose to give me the trophy as the Sedona SlamMaster, which now sits on my entertainment unit, proudly overlooking all the slams of the 2012-2013 slam poetry season.

    Whatever team I'm on in 2013 will be gunning for the next trophy.




    The FlagSlam Team at Nationals in August and peforming nothing but duo poems.

    I have always loved Ryan Brown's poetry.

    Being able to perform a duo poem with him at the National Poetry Slam was awesome. We had performed my poem "Dear Pluto" flawlessly at the Copperstate Poetry Slam and I was looking forward to slamming it at Nationals.

    FlagSlam 2012: nodalone, Ryan Brown, Jackson Morris, myself and Tara
    Pollock outside our venue at the National Poetry Slam in Charlotte, N.C.
    I wrote the poem and Ryan did the edits to transform it into a duo.

    We killed it in the first and second rounds of the National Poetry Slam and gave the powerhouse Nuyorican Poets' Cafe a run for its money, leading them for two rounds before they and Hawaii slam pushed out some great poems and pushed us to third place.

    Slamming with such a talented team was a great experience.

    Having been to nationals as a solo performer so many times, I looked forward to an odd anomaly this year; I perform on the nationals stage three times, none of which were solo. My first poem was with Ryan, my second was "Babies" with nodalone, and my third was a duo poem with Tara Pollock dancing.

    I also got trashed at nationals, no surprise there, and handed out nearly every copy of


    My newest poetry book "The Opposite of Camouflage"

    GumptionFest VII

    Yep, seven years of providing free art for the community.

    This was the first year without our founders Dylan Jung and Danielle Gervasio. There was some complaints about shifting the location of the venue from Coffee Pot Drive to the Old Marketplace and a lot of headaches between organizers who had some difficulty getting along. There were also complaints about so many out of town acts and so few locals on the stages. But the economy has been weak, and there are fewer full-tme and amateur performers in Sedona,

    Splitting sites was admittedly troublesome as a lot of people didn't realize the festival was as large as it was. The stage at Sun Signs suffered the most, which is real shame because Mark Jacobson has been one of biggest, longest supporters.

    GumptionFest is always an experiement and we learned from this one. As we say every GumptionFest, next year will be better.

    On the plus side, I fought for my poets to be treated as equals on the programs, website and promotional materials. Poets The Klute, Tara Pollock, Evan Dissinger, Josh Wiss, Taylor Hayes, John Q, Batman (Biance Luedecker) and Geoff Jackson all had a turn on the microphone with The Klute winning the annual GumptionFest Haiku Death Match, reclaiming the title from his 2010 victory.

    Get ready for GumptionFest VIII in September.




    Death of Chris Lane in August

    Ever since Christopher Lane's death, people have asked me my reaction, or been afraid to. This is as near as I get to an official statement.

    The reason I moved to Sedona in March 2004 was to help Chris Lane run NORAZ Poets.

    Despite being friends from the 2001 Flagstaff National Poetry Slam Team through our years living together as slam poets in Sedona, he kicked me off the 2006 NORAZ Poets Slam Team after Meghan Jones had a temper tantrum over some angry emails and quit in a tizzy about two weeks before the National Poetry Slam.

    The fact Lane created a previously nonexistent "ethics of email correspondence" rule and tried to send me a certified letter telling me I was off the rather then call me or stop by -- we lived in the same small town after all -- was a bullshit move on his part I felt and I never forgave him for the coldness with which he behaved toward his friendly rival and one of his oldest in Northern Arizona.

    This staged photo of Chris Lane in Jerome in 2004 and me would later prove
    to be our de facto relationship from 2006 until his death in Aug. 2012.
    Thus began the Sedona Poetry Civil War, as one of our mutual friends called it in 2010. For the first year, I was "banned" from competing in NORAZ slams, but still went to a few in Flagstaff while avoiding those in my own town. I still co-ran a relatively popular open mic with Greg Nix at the Szechuan Martini Bar.

    In February 2007, Sedona Monthly ran an article of Lane's franchise of the Alzheimer's Poetry Project and accidently ran my name in the story and photo captions, to which I took great delight. The reporter had never met me.

    On March 12, 2007, he called for a truce and we met in a neutral location at a restaurant to discuss the terms. We negotiated a code of conduct for NORAZ, the terms of which he changed when he sent a final draft on March 27, 2007, adding in a whole series of rules about drug and alcohol use, which in a poetry scene or any civil setting were superfluous and unnecessary for a simple nonprofit. After all, I held a poetry open mic at a Sedona bar and banning minors from entering was the job of the bar and the bouncers, not Nix and myself.

    At the same time, Nix and I were hosting the Sedona Poetry Open Mic, an event which Lane wanted to put the NORAZ Poets logo, but which Nix and I declined as long as the alcohol portion of the code of conduct was still in question. In any case the dialogue fell apart by mid-April.

    In 2007-2008, Aaron Johnson stepped down as FlagSlam Slam Master. NORAZ. The new FlagSlam had little to do with NORAZ afterward, and in late 2008, the FlagSlam poets asked me to feature. That marked the end of Lane's involvement with the adult slam as he turned to Brave New Voices, the youth slam teams, and one for which there was more grant money to be had to run the nonprofit. I made a point to fill the void for all ages slams in the Verde Valley, first hosting a team slam at the Old Town Center for the Arts in Cottonwood, then later starting the Sedona Poetry Slam in 2009.

    By 2009, the civil war had become a cold one; he didn't attend or support any of my events and I didn't attend or support any of his; the exception being one Sedona Poetry Slam featuring a former 2001 teammate, Josh Fleming, which he attended but did not speak to me.

    I stylized the Sedona Poetry Slam to be what NORAZ Poets had began as, and opposite of what it evolved into. I wanted Sedona Poetry Slam to be open to all without regard to poets' personal lives, democratic, supportive both artistically and financially, and I set the ground rule that under no circumstances would I make any profit from poetry slams. All money from the slam returns to the poets via prize money, feature poets' pay, or team registration. In the intervening years, I heard stories from other poets and arts organizers about questionable financial and personal behavior; money or support for programs promised, then retracted, then promised again, then retracted or renegotiated, and various poets in Northern Arizona had falling outs over projects he supported then backed off from.

    Lane also began to refer to himself as Ya'ir, a Hebrew word meaning "he who enlightens," and putting "Christopher" into quotes. Lane was raised Catholic, but had become a Buddhist by the time I met him in Sedona. He converted to Judiasm before marrying his wife, but the name change was a bit much. I mean, we used to make fun of poets with stage names, going so far as suggesting he starting slamming under the stage name "Moniker" and I start slamming as "Pre-10-Shus" (pretentious). Toward the end, I suppose someone in the scene should have seen the decline, but his charisma just made him seem like he was getting more and more eccentric.

    On Aug. 19, 2012, at 7:05 a.m., Lane was pronounced dead at his home from benzodiazepine and narcotic intoxication, according to the Coconino County Medical Examiner's Office. I received word from a mutual friend later that morning and got a copy of the autopsy in September. Reading an autopsy is a odd experience -- an antiseptic description of a person's body you once used to share conversation and meals.

    I always expected that at some point, Lane would have apologized and our years of enmity would have come to an abrupt end. I'm not vindictive without cause and I'm quick to forgive when I believe in the sincerity of an apology. With his accidental overdose, we never had the luxury of repairing our friendship, but deep down I always thought it was inevitable.

    The civil war -- a melodramatic title but one I like, being a poet -- did make me into a better organizer and public figure simply because I tried to be his opposite. In the end, knowing him longer than nearly anyone outside of his family, and seeing both his light side and dark side, I feel like I knew him better than most and I hope in the end, he respected me as only a rival could. Coming to terms with his death was difficult because few people understood what having a sincere arch-rival or arch-nemesis is like. One mutual friend asked if I felt like Superman, Batman, or Obi-wan Kenobi hearing Lex Luthor, the Joker or Anakin Skywalker had died, but another said it was more like Iron Man and Captain America: we were rivals and didn't get along, but in the end, we were on the same side, promoting poetry and inspiring other poets to take the stage.

    That poem will one day be written.




    Saul Williams on November

    There are a few Greats in poetry slam every slammer should see in the flesh at least once. Marc Smith. Mike McGee. Derrick Brown. Shane Koyczan. Patricia Smith. Marty McConnell. Rachel McKibbons. Beau Sia. Taylor Mali. and Saul Williams.

    Considering Saul Williams lives in Paris now, I figured the nearest I would ever get would be some book tour in the late 2030s when I could afford the airfare and time off to hop a suborbital shuttle and catch him at some little theater in the Sorbonne.

    Instead, he came to Phoenix and performed a feature at Lawn Gnome, the bookstore performance space owned by my old friend and FlagSlam teammate Aaron Johnson.

    He performed new poems as well as his signature poems, ", said the Shotgun to the Head," "Sha-Clack-Clack," "Black Stacey" "S/he" and a big portion of "The Dead Emcee Scrolls."

    I got all my books signed, too.




    November Election

    As a news junkie, I was obsessed with the 2012 elections, both on the state and national levels. I interviewed Congressional District 1 Democratic primary candidate Wenona Benally Baldenegro, Republican primary candidate Doug Wade and the eventual winner, Ann Kirkpatrick.

    I installed Nate Silver's 535 app so I could watch the daily poll changes as they came across every morning.

    The reelection of Barack Obama seemed more or less inevitable as the opposition put forth only mediocre candidates unloved by the party running on an anti-Obama campaign rather than putting forth a real plan for any worthwhile changes.

    Gay marriage was approved in four states and recreational marijuana use was approved in two states, and while I have no vested personal interest in either, I am happy to see American move to sanity on progressive social issues.

    The repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell means we're moving toward an America where I can one day go to a gay friend's wedding which will have the same legal standing a straight one. “The arc of the moral universe Is long, but it bends toward justice,” minister Theodore Parker said in an 1853 sermon. One day I will, with great difficulty, attempt to explain to my children how their country could think one group of people could be denied their civil rights based on whom they love.

    I expect puzzled looks at the absurdity during that conversation.




    Winning the Dylan Thomas Award in December


    Mary Heyborne won the Christopher Lane Memorial Award. I won the Dylan
    Thomas Award for Excellence in the Written and Spoken Word, Eric Haury
    and Barbara tied for third and Josh Wiss won second place.
    On Dec. 14, Pumphouse Poets and Prose in Ken's Creekside Plaza and Cocopah Bead Shop North, awarded me the Dylan Thomas for Excellence in the Written and Spoken Word. Poet Joshua Wiss won the second place Dylan Thomas award and debuted his first book of poetry "Wonder: Full Bloom." Author and poet Barbara Mayer and author Eric Haury tied for third.

    Poet and playwright Mary Heyborne won the Christopher Lane Memorial Award.

    The Pumphouse Prose and Poetry Project is sponsored by Gary Every, author of 11 books who acted as presenter at the readings, Dr. Elizabeth Oakes, award winning poet and former Shakespeare professor, Cynthia Tuck, owner of Ageless Pages Bookstore and Ann Fabricant, owner of Cocopah North. The project will resume reading in the spring.





    Necessary Publishing

    The last two days of the year, I spent in Flagstaff with Ryan Brown, Robert Gonzales, Verbal Kensington, Josh Wiss and his girlfriend Katie, Maya Hall, Evan Dissinger, working on our newest project, NecessaryPublishing, from which plan to have a 100+ page book by early-2013.

    It's the culmination of all the art we're created over the last few months coming to life thanks to Verbal Kensington's motivation and organization.

    That's my focus for 2013.

    Saturday, August 1, 2009

    Slam Tutorial: Embrace Your Inner Nerd - Generally

    Your secret shame, be it Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potty, audiences love it when you Embrace Your Inner Nerd. If you secretly love a nerdy topic, your audience likely does, too. Embrace it, milk it and push the limits.
    If you can liken your nerd-love to real-world topics, either dramatic or humorous, you can greatly win over an audience. Half the fun is indulging in your nerdy passion, the other half is making it relevant to an audience who may only have a tangential relationship to the topic.

    There are several subspecies, the most common of which is: Stereotypical Nerd

    Shappy Seasholtz's "I Am That Nerd" is not just a celebration of all that is nerdy - alluding to Star Wars, real world scientists Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, E.T. and A.L.F. - but also great slam poems.
    The poem touches on these topics to give reference but doesn't delve into them so deeply that the audience might get lost, for instance, "Han Solo hit / on Boba Fett that caused him to fall into the / Sarlac pit?" is perhaps the most obscure science fiction reference and even it isn't all that deep. He easily could have explored the metaphor into generally known Star Wars canon and even obscurely known fanon, yet keeps the poem flowing on the surface level so that those who have only seen the original Star Wars trilogy once can keep in touch.
    On the poetic side, "I Am That Nerd" mimics Saul Williams' manifesto "Sha Clack Clack," one of the best-known poems in the national poetry slam scene, Williams' spiritualistic poem "Ohm," and Kayo's "Who Am I?"
    Shappy's title "I Am That Nerd" is a direct allusion to Williams' hook line "I am that nigga," from "Sha Clack Clack."

    "I Am That Nerd"
    By Shappy Seasholtz


    I am that nerd
    I am that eternal nerd of spoken word
    What can I say?
    Spent all my rent money buying action figures on eBay!
    I didn't come over to chit-chat
    I came here to role-play!
    I will smite thee with my 12-sided die
    You better watch out
    Cuz I'm coming atcha with my nerd eye!
    I'm rocking you like Geddy Lee
    I'd talk to more girls if they didn't make me
    want to pee
    myself
    I'm a magical elf
    Keep your hands off my Star Wars shelf
    That's right bitch -- that's a Jawa with its
    original plastic cape
    Don't that flip your switch?
    Like the switch Han Solo hit
    on Boba Fett that caused him to fall into the
    Sarlac pit?
    Lest we forget!
    I'm coming at you in 3-D
    Keepin' it reel with two EE's, y'see?
    And there's nothing you can do
    Cuz I'm so much nerdier and smarter than you!
    I had Stephen Hawking -- gawking and gasping
    for air
    Blew his mind with my knowledge and he fell
    out of his chair!
    I beat Matthew Broderick at war games with my Atari
    I dug up Einstein's bones and made them say I'm sorry
    for that weak-ass theory of relativity
    Cuz MC Squared=Me, see?
    I'm the plastic baby Jesus in your mind's nativity
    I'll deprogram your mind with my Commodore 64
    I'm so rich with nerd power
    I make Bill Gates feel poor!
    I will kidnap George Lucas from Skywalker ranch
    and lock him in my basement until he removes
    Jar-Jar Binks from every frame of Phantom Menace
    and Attack of the Clones and replaces him with me!
    For I am an ancient Jedi Knight; only Yoda could be older
    I knocked Mork's space egg out of orbit and made it crash in Boulder
    I'm the one who gave Darth Vader asthma
    I liquefied Alf and E.T. and drank their plasma
    Only I can unravel the mystery of the Sith
    Cuz I knocked over the Black Monolith
    with my boner!
    Bet you didn't see that one cumming!
    I'm a mystical nerd shaman who never stops
    drumming on your stupid, stupid mind!
    I'm the Original Star Trek and you are
    Deep Space Nine!
    I spin webs round your soul like Spidey on acid
    Because my nerd rocket is taking off
    And your shit be flaccid -- OHM!

    Shappy attended Eastern Michigan University on a speech scholarship and went on to win two National Forensics titles in After Dinner speaking and Dramatic Duo. He also acted and directed several plays including Pop Manifesto (a one-act play Shappy wrote in which all of the dialogue was commercial jingles) which won Shappy an undergraduate Symposium Award.

    After college, Shappy joined The Great Theatre Migration of 91 to Chicago. He formed several theatre companies with his college buddies and wrote and performed his own material. One show was a throwback to the Living Newspaper of the Great Depression era in which current events were acted out on stage called Every Speck Of Dust That Falls To Earth. Shappy also worked with members of the Neo-futurists for a musical about quantum physics.


    Shappy eventually discovered the Poetry Slam at The Green Mill and wound up being taped (and bleeped twice) for CNN. He won a slam and ended up touring with Lollapalooza 1994, spreading the word of Nerd Power and making lots of friends along the way. The next year he "Shappy-roned" the first ever Austin slam team to the Nationals and has been an honorary Austin poet ever since, performing at nearly every South by Southwest the last 8 years.

    Shappy then tried his schtick in the Chicago comedy scene. He hosted his own live talk show (Nite Cap with Shap) and appeared in the Chicago Comedy Festival 4 times including the Neil Hamburger Show. He also appeared regularly at Midnight Bible School at the legendary Second City.

    Shappy has competed at a National Poetry Slam only once so far for the Mad Bar team in 2000. He made it as far as the Individual Semis and was asked to perform in Denmark with Beau Sia and Shayne Koyczan.

    Shappy has had 2 books published by Kapow! Press including Little Book Of Ass which won a Firecracker Award for best poetry in 2000. He also has a CD called Poet/Comedian/Asshole available.

    He now resides in NYC pursuing all things fun and poetic. In the 6 months he has been in New York he has performed at several colleges, slammed Soundheim lyrics at Joe's Pub, improved with the Upright Citizen's Brigade, auditioned for Mad TV and can be found bartending at Bob Holman's latest venture, The Bowery Poetry Club.

    In his spare time Shappy plays Scrabble with his super-hot girlfriend Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, reads lots of comic books and dreams of one day owning a crime-solving wiener dog named Wallingford.



    "Sha Clack Clack"
    By Saul Williams


    If I could find the spot where truth echoes
    I would stand there and whisper memories of my children's future
    I would let their future dwell in my past
    so that I might live a brighter now
    Now is the essence of my domain and it contains
    all that was and will be
    And I am as I was and will be because I am and always will be
    that nigga
    I am that nigga
    I am that nigga
    I am that timeless nigga that swings on pendulums like vines
    through mines of booby trapped minds that are enslaved by time
    I am the life that supersedes lifetimes, I am
    It was me with serpentine hair and a timeless stare
    that with immortal glare turned mortal fear into stone time capsules
    They still exist as the walking dead, as I do
    The original sulphurhead, symbol of life and matriarchy
    severed head Medusa, I am
    I am that nigga
    I am that nigga!
    I am that nigga!!
    I am a negro! Yes negro, negro from "necro" meaning death
    I overcame it so they named me after it
    And I be spitting at death from behind
    and putting "Kick Me" signs on it's back
    because I am not the son of Sha-Clack-Clack
    I am before that,
    I am before
    I am before before
    Before death is eternity,
    after death is eternity
    There is no death there's only eternity
    And I be riding on the wings of eternity
    like HYAH! HYAH! HYAH!
    Sha-Clack-Clack
    but my flight doesn't go undisturbed
    Because time makes dreams defer
    And all of my time fears are turning my days into daymares
    And I live daymares reliving nightmares
    of what taunted my past
    Sha-Clack-Clack, time is beatin' my ass
    And I be havin' dreams of chocolate covered watermelons
    Filled with fried chickens like pinatas
    With little pickaninny sons and daughters
    standing up under them with big sticks and aluminum foil
    Hittin' em, tryin' to catch pieces of fallin' fried chicken wings
    And Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben are standing in the corners
    with rifles pointed at the heads of the little children
    "Don't shoot the children," I shout, "don't shoot the children!"
    but they say it's too late
    They've already been infected by time
    But that shit is before my time
    I need more time
    I need more time
    But it's too late
    They start shooting at children and killing them!
    One by one,
    two by two,
    three by three,
    four by four
    Five by five,
    six by six, but
    my spirit is growing seven by seven
    Faster than the speed of light
    Cause light only penetrates the darkness that's already there
    and I'm already there
    I'm here at the end of the road
    which is the beginning of the road beyond time, but
    where my niggaz at?

    Oh shit, don't tell me my niggaz got lost in time
    My niggaz are dying before their time
    My niggaz are serving unjust time
    My niggaz are dying because of.. time