On a Slammy note
After a rousing conversation on Slam last night (almost perfect preparation for the academic paper that I must start today), I dug through some old things and found my sideboard from the 2000 Rust Belt (which was pretty similar to my sideboard for my first NPS experience in 2001). It was the first slam I'd ever been in outside of Columbus and consisted of my most popular poems at the time.
Main sideboard
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The Messenger
Pimps Up, Poems Down
La Vida Loca
Theme Song for a Drive-by Deferred
Marxism at Mickey D's
Black Poets Don't Smile
Secondary Sideboard
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Singing Phyllis Hyman's Lament
The Blackest
Back To Afrika Robots
Mascots
Note: I don't do ANY of these poems anymore (features, open mics, slams...for anything), and almost nobody anywhere in the last 3 years of me reading has even heard these poems. I could likely go back and fix a couple of these for contemporary use, maybe make a team piece or two out of them now.
Note #2: "Pimps Up, Poems Down" was the poem I did during my first visit to the Green Mill. It was a bit scary: when I started the poem, nobody laughed for about the first page. Once they figured I wasn't being too serious, they loosened up a bit and got into it. Ever since, I've been very mindful that audiences, while not always inherently political, tend to have a public politic of taste. Navigating that politic is the difference between having a good or bad time with the same risky poem.
Main sideboard
--------------
The Messenger
Pimps Up, Poems Down
La Vida Loca
Theme Song for a Drive-by Deferred
Marxism at Mickey D's
Black Poets Don't Smile
Secondary Sideboard
--------------------
Singing Phyllis Hyman's Lament
The Blackest
Back To Afrika Robots
Mascots
Note: I don't do ANY of these poems anymore (features, open mics, slams...for anything), and almost nobody anywhere in the last 3 years of me reading has even heard these poems. I could likely go back and fix a couple of these for contemporary use, maybe make a team piece or two out of them now.
Note #2: "Pimps Up, Poems Down" was the poem I did during my first visit to the Green Mill. It was a bit scary: when I started the poem, nobody laughed for about the first page. Once they figured I wasn't being too serious, they loosened up a bit and got into it. Ever since, I've been very mindful that audiences, while not always inherently political, tend to have a public politic of taste. Navigating that politic is the difference between having a good or bad time with the same risky poem.