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.

"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.

Sedona Poetry Slam 2023-24 flyer

 

"Justino" by Ryan Brown

"Justino"

By Ryan Brown

It took him forty-eight years

to become a dishwasher

at Pita Jungle.

Nine bucks an hour,

thirty-some hours a week,

sweat pouring off his brow

to mask the exhaustion of a face

that is no longer concerned with fairness.

He is here, everyday,

fingers to the grindstone,

tougher than the forgotten beef jerky

in some badass rebel biker's

leather jacket pocket.

He is the Zen master,

the rush without the hurry,

too grateful for what he has

and for that, 

he does not blend in there,

but this is one of his high points.

Justino does the dirty work

in a restaurant that expects

wine glasses to sparkle

like they haven't been whored out

to fifty colors of lipstick

in the last two weeks alone.

When you can't speak English

or read in any language

but the blue, green, 

and orange tongues of dish soap,

it is difficult to embellish

your minimal education on a job application,

where only a name and previous work experience

sweat off the page,

as if about to be interrogated 

by bitter men in blue uniforms.

"Quiero trabajar."

"Quiero estar contento"

and in Arizona there is a chance, 

there are truckloads of wasted food,

and it is far easier to feed a backbone

whose vertebrae have the weight of

an entire family hanging on

for survival.

This is one of his high points, 

and at five-foot-five

Justino still reaches like a summit.

He was raised ten sniper-scope

magnifications away from an America 

that will cross the ocean

armed and blindfolded

to siphon a stranger's oil,

but won't speak patiently

with the next door neighbors about

changes that need to happen

on our shared soil.

His existence isn't waist-deep 

in politics anymore;

this is all too human for puppet shows now.

It all happened in a cluster of struggle

before he could choose the outcome of the story

through a ballot box,

so he wrote it with the distance

between two constitutions,

determined as the sun

to run circles around us.

He exercises patience everyday,

arms unwinding only after 10 p.m.,

thousands of miles and light years from childhood,

the Sahara breathing sand 

on each country's land,

but we aren't supposed to know

we have this much in common.

The invisible particles of a hundred wasted dinners

cling to his skin like the smog smothering 

both Downtown Phoenix and Mexico City.

His fists are iron 

and have been crushing minutes 

into nickels since he was 9 years old.  

He is 48 going on 60

going on "what-did-all-these-years-evaporate-into?"

like he ever had a choice,

like he wasn't born into making things easier

for people who never had it hard.

The grindstone always looks like a rolling highway

when you've got your face pressed against it,

and 50 years from now,

his skin will be so

wrinkled and rough and wise,

it won't even be real.

Some Americans are still compelled

to resist a society where different nationalities 

are forced to cooperate peacefully.

They hate the idea so much,

that sometimes, 

they even write an email about it,

or a bill.

But his time is too precious for the bias 

of blue comfort and hungry fear.

He wants only to give a piece

of this world to his family,

and in a place where people

would rather have the world

handed to them, 

he does one hell 

of a job.

Ryan Brown is a poet's poet in every sense of the word. The mountain town of Flagstaff is known for a poetry slam scene where poets come together as a community, and  Brown was at the center of the growth as the FlagSlam Poetry Slam's slammaster from 2008 to 2012.

Brown attended four National Poetry Slam competitions as a member of the FlagSlam team in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012, getting as far as the semi-finals round in 2009. At the helm of Flagstaff's slam scene, Brown brought in featured poets such as Andrea Gibson and Gypsee Yo to help reinvigorate the poetry community in a town still bursting with poetic flavor a decade late.

An English major at Northern Arizona University, Brown collaborated often with poets such as Frank O'Brien, John Cartier and Sedona's Jessica Guadarrama and Christopher Fox Graham. He writes with the future in mind, his poems often revolving around the intimacy of human relationships.

After graduating with an English degree from NAU in 2012, Brown taught English in South Korea. He now lives in Nashville, Tenn.

Dan Seaman, "Side of the Road"

"Side of the Road" is some daydreaming about recently-old relationships and moving along on a long uninterrupted wide-open-country motorcycle trip to Redstone, Colo. danseamanfmx/localafprods music: www.audionautix.com

Sedona Poetry Slam returns for 15th season on Saturday, Oct. 7

The Sedona Poetry Slam returns for its 15th season Saturday, Oct. 7. Performance poets will bring high-energy, competitive spoken word to the Mary D. Fisher Theatre starting at 7:30 p.m. 

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. 

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.

The 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 slam of the season will be held on Saturday, Jan. 13, featuring R.J. Walker, of Salt Lake City. Subsequent slams will be 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. 

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.