Confessions of a Human Nerve Ending

In this episode, Don re-broadcasts "Slam: Literary Fad or Movement." The hour long show features poetry from Marc Smith, Patricia Smith, Marty McConnell, Regie Gibson, Taylor Mali, Gary Glazner, Danny Solis, Colleen Gorman, and DaShade Moonbeam. It also includes interviews with many of above poets. In the 9th installment of the PSI podcast, series curator, Don McIver re-broadcasts "Slam: Literary Fad or Movement." Don McIver MP3 5th March 2007 poetry, slam, art, performance

After a nice hike in the moutains above Salida, we swam in the hot springs pool and I went over to my workshop at Bongo Billy’s. I was surprised to see the room full, more dropping in and wondered why I even bothered to ask their names if I wasn’t going to remember them. Oh, the teacher in me. It says do this and this to break the ice, but doesn’t bother to tell the poet, “Now make sure you try and remember their names.” On the plus side, I started out my workshop: “Spoken Word: Literary Fad or Movement,” by explaining my relationship to this very strange, amorphous genre. We talked a bit about the early Dadaist movement and played Kurt Schwitter and argued that that is arguably the birth of “spoken word,” because if there is any sense to be made in what he is saying it is in the hearing of it. I think the hearing of it creates a sort of happy satisfaction in the listener, which reading it on the page never would. But it would be nice to really understand what ...

The little performance poetry festival that could. A few years ago, I was at the Mercury Cafe in Denver (the home of the fabulous Denver Poetry Slam) and saw a poster of the 2003 Sparrows. Gary Glazner, Roanne Lewis (the original incarnation of the Headless Buddhas) and I traveled up for one night and auditioned (5 minutes) and they invited us to come back the next year. We, sans Roanne, came back and performed (adding Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer to the mix) and we killed. Easily the best Headless Buddhas set we've done. Well, Gary moved on to other things, I moved on to other things and didn't really think about Sparrows (in 2005-duh! wonder why) and in 2006 I sent the organizer an e-mail and asked if he needed anybody. They'd already overfilled their bill, so I didn't come up. But this year, they wrote me and asked if I'd be willing to perform, just me. So, last night I performed. At first I thought it was gonna be weird. They had set up the stage as ...