My own Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction, and occasional commentary on all of the above.
Totally forgot to put this out there: Word Street has launched! That's the poetry/spoken word magazine I've been hinting at for awhile that I was writing the article on slam's relevance for. This issue is kind of a sampler, a web-only teaser, but the hope is for the first print edition to publish in October. Check it out at it's temporary address: Word Street Also, drop me some ideas for articles or essays. And tell all your friends!
Been sent some interesting names for the show so far, with early favorites Performance Anxiety, Breaking Form and Word of Mouth. Send more.
Haven’t heard back from Jackie Sheeler yet about the length of tomorrow’s feature so I’m getting a little antsy about my set. There’s a big difference between 20, 30 and 45-minute sets. I don’t like 20-minute sets as I never feel like I get in a good rhythm and always have to leave out a couple of my favorite poems. 30-minutes is solid, enough time to present a range of work without feeling rushed. 45-minutes can be daunting as you have to really nail your flow to keep the audience engaged but it’s also a fun challenge. The longer the set, the better feel for a poet’s style and range you get. Three-poem slam wonders generally flounder past 20 minutes as the bombast gets old and the lack of depth becomes more and more apparent.
I’ve been reading through a lot of my old stuff recently and was surprised by how long it’s been since I’ve read some of them out loud. Read Celluloid Childhood at Acentos on Tuesday and, despite the obvious rust, remembered that it was one of my favorite pieces at one point. The combination of pushing for the new in slam with allowing my own output to take a back seat for so many years has left me in the weird position of having to reconnect with almost all of my work as if it were brand new. Hopefully tomorrow is at least a 30-minute set so I can do a nice mix of the old and new. Well, newish! 馃槈
Whenever I find a new passion - whether person, place or thing - I tend to throw myself into it 120%. Having cleared my plate of the administrative responsibilities (and psychological baggage) of running a little bit louder, comic books have quickly and completely rushed in to fill the void. I am so hooked! Finished reading Mark Salisbury's fascinating Writers on Comics Scriptwriting, interviews with an assortment of prominent comic book writers discussing inspiration, motivation and process, along with a healthy dose of egomania and outright weirdness. Grant Morrison, anyone? Despite only having a single woman represented and a complete…
Made it to the gym today. First time in鈥ell, before Isaac was born, at least! The convenience of it being right across the street from the job should shame me into going consistently twice a week. It should be noted that I don鈥檛 really know my way around a gym. Don鈥檛 know the names of most of my muscles or their corresponding exercises. The little bit of stretching I know comes from the Army and my old acting workshops! (Improv is great exercise, physically and psychologically; much better than preparing to die.) Mainly, I use the bike or the treadmill,…
It's official. I've stepped down from the louderARTS Project and from running a little bit louder. Writing the email was one of the toughest things I've done in a while, not for any second-guessing but for getting it right. No bitterness, no anger, no potshots. No need for any of that. I did ask that I still be able to host two of the upcoming shows - Mara's feature and Maria Mazziotti Gillan's - as I feel like I should be out front on those two. Some administrative loose ends to wrap up but, for the most part, it's a…
Last night was a lot of fun. A bit too much, maybe, as my hungover ass stayed home today! Shappy beat me 3-2 in the head-to-head. I won the Star Wars round (!) and the imitation round, he took the other three. Every round was split 3-2 except for the imitation where I won all 5 judges over! Quacky was probably the most fun I've ever had on stage. I need to write funny stuff! The Anything Goes round went really well (despite losing to Shappy's musical lambasting of the Matrix Reloaded) as Sabrina's edits made the piece flow nicely.…
ser路en路dip路i路ty the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for. Omar is a bad man. Bad. Appealing to the geek in me, he dropped the idea of a fan fiction-type project in my head - writing our own versions of comic books online - and it's like the time I was introduced to Pokemon! We hit St. Mark's Comics Friday night to refresh my memory as I haven't actively bought comics since the late 80's and I realized my taste in comics was pretty similar to my taste in other things: the underdogs, the unrespected, the…