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 1.6 million views 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.
Son of a nightclub singer, Kingman slam poet Mikel Weisser. spent his teens as a hitchhiker. Since then Weisser has gone on to receive a masters in literature and a masters in secondary education, published hundreds of freelance magazine and newspaper articles and political comedy columns, along with seven books of poetry and short fiction. A former homeless shelter administrator, contestant on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," and survivor of his first wife's suicide, Weisser teaches junior high history and English in Bullhead City. He and his wife, Beth, have turned their So-Hi, Ariz., property into a peace sign theme park. Sedona Poetry Slam, Round #2, Poet #11, July 17, 2009.
This poem was my particular favorite at this slam because of its lyricism, because it captures our seemingly futile despiration to halt genocide despite seeing it and because my mother was in the audience. I almost imagined he was writing it about her because she sometimes still scares the bejeezus out of me.
Ed Mabrey is a two-time Haiku National Slam Champion and 2007-2008 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion. He has been a member of and coached several winning Rust Belt Regional Poetry Slam Teams out of Columbus, Ohio. Mabrey has released two books, "From the Page to the Stage and Back Again" to critical acclaim and "Revoked:My GhettoPass(ivity)" which was a limited release item.Maybrey has released two CDs of his own work, and has been on projects with other artists and DJs.
Gary Every's career has followed many diverse paths including geology exploration, carpenter, chef, piano player, punk rocker, dishwasher, photographer, mountain bike instructor, soccer coach, bonfire storyteller and just a general bad example to society as a whole.
It is perhaps as an author that Mr. Every has gained the most fame. Published nearly a thousand times, he has four books to his credit and more on the way.
Sedona Poetry Slam, Round #2, Poet #8, July 17, 2009.
Frank O'Brien is a 20-year-old student at Coconino Community College, focusing in the general studies and pre-nursing. Originally from Phoenix, O'Brien entered the slam poetry scene in fall 2007. He traveled to Madison, Wis., in 2008 and to Orlando, Fla., in 2009 as a member of the Flagstaff National Slam Team. O'Brien is now an active poet and administrator of the FlagSlam Poetry Slam in Flagstaff. Sedona Poetry Slam, Round #2, Poet #7.
Wendy Davis is Creative Director of W-Fun TV, a certified yoga instructor and vocal coach in Sedona. Sedona Poetry Slam, Round #2, Poet #6, July 17, 2009
Norberto "Bert" Cisneros is a Cottonwood poet and jazz trumpet player. He has slammed in Sedona and FlagSlam and regularly reads at the Sedona Poetry Open Mic.
Ryan Brown is a kid from Phoenix who spends most of his time posing as a writer and poet. He now goes to school and lives in Flagstaff, where he is the SlamMaster of the FlagSlam Poetry Slam. Ryan Brown represented the Flagstaff Nationals Team at the National Poetry Slam.
Sedona Poetry Slam, Round #2, Poet #4, July 17, 2009.
We Call Him Papa for Frank Leslie "Buster" Redfield May 14, 1925 - Oct. 31, 2004
we call him Papa and he could move mountains with his silence
he fathered a family of artists who knew the value of labor the efficiency of expression if it is unclear, rephrase it if it is unusable, remove it if it is imperfect, rework it until it is as much a part of you as a limb he never said this but his life implied it
his stone eyes edited lies from our speech before we could speak them his hands held me tight once after I sinned they held me soft when my father translated himself into a mythology I've since ceased believing in his hands were the tools with which he spoke through his silence
he carved and crafted rifles like Stradivarius made violins and the first recoil was a symphony compressed to a split second he brought wood to life as though generations of forests grew to make the right grain the right feel worthy of his talent
he did not build airplanes, he built aircraft with the precision of a heart surgeon knowing a loose screw, one misaligned wire could transform a craft of beauty into a coffin and wife like his into a widow he made no widows except one
he crafted art that soared like mechanical angels and made us feel how he must have felt with Grandma
even in his absence he scares me because he was so much more of what a man should be than the men I see around me than the man who fathered me
he was sometimes the machine moving me he was sometimes the monster under my bed keeping me from going gently into the night without fighting the darkness he was sometimes a giant stretching hands from horizon to horizon holding down the sun and moon and dictating their rising
I am convinced that eastern Montana is so perfectly flat in awe of him
we call him Papa and he could move mountains with his silence
I never heard him say he loved her not in words not in a way I could steal not in a way that the cheap poet in me could have plagiarized into a stanza for some mediocre poem unworthy of his memory
I never heard him say he loved her with words
he said it with his eyes
he said it in the stories my mother would tell me about how he would raise armies and wage wars just to bring her flowers
he said it with the way he told me about driving across New York and Pennsylvania every weekend just to see her for two hours between college classes and curfews
he said he loved her by playing "waltzing matilda" on a harmonica like he was asking her to dance for the first time, even after all these years
he said he loved her by showing us how good man should love a woman right
we call him Papa and he could move mountains with his silence
he is the poet me, his eldest grandson, I am just his microphone
Antranormus is a hip-hop artist who constantly seeks to redefine or blur completely the boundaries between hip-hop, poetry and absolute absurdity. Known for his complex, multisyllabic rhyme schemes and controversial subject matter, he has shared the stage with members of the Wu Tang Clan, Jurassic 5, Abstract Rude, Illogic, and Sole.
Sedona Poetry Slam, Round #1, Poet #10, July 17, 2009
Ryan Brown is a kid from Phoenix who spends most of his time posing as a writer and poet. He now goes to school and lives in Flagstaff, where he is the SlamMaster of the FlagSlam Poetry Slam. Ryan Brown represented the Flagstaff Nationals Team at the National Poetry Slam.
Sedona Poetry Slam, Round #1, Poet #8, July 17, 2009.
Norberto "Bert" Cisneros is a Cottonwood poet and jazz trumpet player. He has slammed in Sedona and FlagSlam and regularly reads at the Sedona Poetry Open Mic.
Frank O'Brien is a 20-year-old student at Coconino Community College, focusing in the general studies and pre-nursing. Originally from Phoenix, O'Brien entered the slam poetry scene in fall 2007. He traveled to Madison, Wis., in 2008 and to Orlando, Fla., in 2009 as a member of the Flagstaff National Slam Team. O'Brien is now an active poet and administrator of the FlagSlam Poetry Slam in Flagstaff. Sedona Poetry Slam, Round #1, Poet #5.
Gary Every's career has followed many diverse paths including geology exploration, carpenter, chef, piano player, punk rocker, dishwasher, photographer, mountain bike instructor, soccer coach, bonfire storyteller and just a general bad example to society as a whole.
It is perhaps as an author that Mr. Every has gained the most fame. Published nearly a thousand times, he has four books to his credit and more on the way.
Sedona Poetry Slam, Round #1, Poet #4, July 17, 2009.
Ed Mabrey is a two-time Haiku National Slam Champion and 2007-2008 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion. He has been a member of and coached several winning Rust Belt Regional Poetry Slam Teams out of Columbus, Ohio. Mabrey has released two books, "From the Page to the Stage and Back Again" to critical acclaim and "Revoked:My GhettoPass(ivity)" which was a limited release item.Maybrey has released two CDs of his own work, and has been on projects with other artists and DJs.
He is the founder of Black Pearl Poetry based in Phoenix, Sedona Poetry Slam, Round #1, Poet #2
Son of a nightclub singer, Kingman slam poet Mikel Weisser. spent his teens as a hitchhiker. Since then Weisser has gone on to receive a masters in literature and a masters in secondary education, published hundreds of freelance magazine and newspaper articles and political comedy columns, along with seven books of poetry and short fiction. A former homeless shelter administrator, contestant on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," and survivor of his first wife's suicide, Weisser teaches junior high history and English in Bullhead City. He and his wife, Beth, have turned their So-Hi, Ariz., property into a peace sign theme park. Sedona Poetry Slam, Round #1, Poet #1, July 17, 2009.
To The Girl Riding Shotgun For Montana and Sarrah Wile
across this home country of rednecks and ranchers the pages of my ancestry turn backward to days running barefoot over vetch and stones when i stood much shorter gracing the sweetgrass with elbows and shoulders instead of the strained fingertips of today memories flood back when i least expect them lessons learned, loves lost, childhood games and their innocence before i translated the rules and learned how to break them
the silhouettes of familiar landscapes eagerly welcome me back as if they're the tourists revisiting a boy they knew in their youth
these green wheat fields of farmer tans these western hats signaling oncoming howdys these selfless smiles from strangers this countryside this is home
a boy i knew once lives here we shared the same name wished on the same stars jumped the same cricks together and left the other behind when we cut the cord leaving him in the Rockies while i wandered the deserts
we see each other still in dreams and play tag with fawns, calves and cubs that have yet to learn our parents play predator and prey
he still plays on the hillsides i long for, beneath fir trees overlooking the valley that once held me fast along the yellowstone artery carving a canyon our ancestors will see from orbit
his house is over the ridge, somewhere down this dusty stretch of gravel, somewhere in the shadow of flax and sweetpeas, somewhere i know the outline of the farm like a thumbprint can pick it blindfolded from all the others simply by the sound of the breeze but the roads still seems unfamiliar though the map clearly says it's here
and to the girl riding shotgun all this land is as new as it seems to me mostly as i wait for the memories in bottles to find me lost in this sea of rolling hills beneath blue moons rising red in the blood of harvest sometimes we're both awash anew in these fields National Geographic anthropologists on assignment deciphering a dialect with a common vocabulary in others she is only a passported traveler while i am timeless standing swallowed by the sunset of red fields touching my family's livelihood in the grain reaching roots down deep into the land that we love as a mother
bud lights, rodeos and Hank Williams rise up from the soil in the aftermath of a solid spring shower as honky-tonk two-steps, broad-rimmed stetsons and a vigorous fiddle shake free the alfalfa baled back home and for a moment in the dim lights old men remember being cowboys while cowgirls look for old wives they will become
to understand montana you must travel it by road knowing that distances are measured in days, not hours every stop is a must-see because haybales are the only signs of human habitation no matter what town you visit, there's always a drink waiting at The Mint, where the bartenders call you "hon," even if they know your name
lost locals identify themselves by family name first in the smallest towns to which your bloodlines tie you in Montana, family comes before the man
here, where death and life are cyclical we learn young to converse honestly because each visit may be the last until the hereafter words are ties that bind
that boy i once knew i see now grown up behind the wheel of every beat-up Ford that passes us the girl riding shotgun learns that the difference between redneck and revolutionary lies in the chance taken by my parents before i could even spell "poet"
that boy sees me, too behind the wheel of every out-of-state plate knowing that this boy looking for home, somewhere is on the interstate, somewhere dreaming of catching up, somewhere where the beer is cold the jukebox plays only johnny cash and on the drive back down country roads the breezes bring back memories on the parachutes of roadside dandelions
Son of a nightclub singer, Kingman slam poet Mikel Weisser. spent his teens as a hitchhiker. Since then Weisser has gone on to receive a masters in literature and a masters in secondary education, published hundreds of freelance magazine and newspaper articles and political comedy columns, along with seven books of poetry and short fiction.
