Genre: Spoken Word

The Inspired Word, a twice-weekly poetry, spoken word, and performance series in New York City, featured P&W-supported poet Beau Sia on September 22. Inspired Word founder and producer Mike Geffner (whose journalistic work has appeared in USA Today, Details Magazine, and the Village Voice) describes the evening.

At my Inspired Word series in Manhattan’s East Village, Los Angeles poet Beau Sia took the stage donned like some kind of rock star: chalk-white jacket flipped up (Elvis-style) at the collar, tight-fitting jeans, and nifty looking maroon-colored shades.

It all seemed pretty cool until we quickly found out the sunglasses weren’t a fashion statement. His eyes, you see, were sensitive right now. “This light is painful to me,” he told the packed downstairs Nexus Lounge–a crowd of about fifty people–inside the Irish pub, One and One. He wore ear plugs too. Because his ears were sensitive as well, he said as flat as can be, his arms pinned to his sides like a pair of wooden slats and his neck, as if held by a brace, not budging a smidgen.

He went on to explain that he’d recently had a bad car accident, suffered whiplash, and now had “this brain-stem injury thing,” which meant a sudden jolt could send his world upside down. Which also meant that he had no choice other than to be desperately “low key." He apologized in advance for not being at his best.

Indeed, imagining a poet known for his frenetic performances (on HBO's Def Poetry and as a two-time National Poetry Slam Champion) unable to use his body reminded me of what Gay Talese once famously wrote about Sinatra having a cold: It’s like “Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel.”

“You guys can’t imagine how frustrating it is for me," Sia said early on, "to not utilize my full physical capability."

But a poet of stunning range, Sia still pulled it off brilliantly, reading with such intensity that his body appeared to pulsate. He had us all leaning forward (with poignant pieces about life’s fragility and wisdom gained from working with stroke patients), laughing a whole lot (especially one moment when he cranked up a stiff left arm to count off parts of his poem with equally stiff fingers), and thinking a ton.

“It’s pretty awesome of you guys to be listening as deeply as you are,” he said. “I can feel [it].”

He received a standing ovation, having created, despite everything working against him, a truly magical evening. He could’ve easily blown off the night and called in sick. But he didn't. Instead, he endured all the discomfort and pain and weirdness for the sake of doing nothing more than sharing his words with an audience. It’s what I’ll remember most about that night. Not the words so much, as what he went through to utter them. Could poetry be any more inspiring?

Photo: Beau Sia. Credit: Raymond Hamlin.

Support for Reading/Workshops events in New York is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with additional support from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

From July 13 to 16, 2011, P&W-supported poets Mayda Del Valle, Oveous Maximus, and Shihan participated in inkSlam, Los Angeles’ largest spoken-word festival, held at the Greenway Court Theatre.

The four-day event featured daily writing and performance workshops and nightly showcases celebrating the creative landscape of artists on the slam poetry scene.

Over one hundred poets, including burgeoning rhymesters and veteran Tony Award winners, graced the stage of the Greenway Court Theatre, as a sold-out audience cheered them on night after night.

“InkSlam allowed L.A. residents to see poetry in a light different from the one they were used to,” said inkSlam director Shihan Van Clief, who performs as Shihan. He is also a founding member of Da’ Poetry Lounge, the nation’s largest ongoing open mic series, which takes place Tuesdays at Greenway Court. “Most people have a junior high or high school reference point for poetry, which was, for a lack of a better term, ‘old’… We offered poetry from a young perspective.”

The festival aims to re-brand poetry as something anyone and everyone can enjoy, according to Van Clief. There were craft workshops geared towards the youth as well as business workshops to better inform poets on how to make art their livelihood in today’s multifaceted market.

InkSlam evolved from the partnership between the nonprofit organization Greenway Arts Alliance and Da’ Poetry Lounge. As Van Clief recalls, the idea for inkSlam came in 2009.

“[The poetry scene] had been defunct for years,” said Van Clief. “There was and is still a definite need for more art-based programs in L.A., and we figured this would be a good starting point; we wanted to create the best poetry festival Los Angeles has ever seen.”

Now inkSlam is making that dream a reality. A spoken-word competition was added to the festival’s agenda, making inkSlam a true poetry slam. In good fun, eight teams competed for the title of inkSlam champion over the course of the last two days of the festival.

Da’ Poetry Lounge, the seasoned home team, came in first, with a team from Santa Cruz finishing an incredibly close second.

“Santa Cruz Slam team snuck in under the radar and surprised a lot of folks,” said Van Clief. “Their group work was just very well thought out and executed to a tee; they made me rethink some of the group material our team had.”

To ensure that the festival would end on the most engaging, and humorous, of notes, the second place team received their $750 cash prize in quarters, leaving third and fourth place winners to receive theirs in dimes and pennies respectively.

Photo: Shihan at a workshop about the business of spoken word. Credit: Cheryl Klein.

Major support for Readings/Workshops in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.