for those of you who don’t follow slam and thus are not aware of Buddy Wakefield… well I’m not going to list his slam resume or talk about any of hisbooks. Instead I suggest you click on the pretty picture below and watch the YouTube video it links to.
Am I right or am I right?
Life’s too short not to see Buddy every time he comes to town.
The show is on Dec7th at the Cypress Lounge (120 Union St.)
And yes, it is an open slam… so if you want to read bring a 1 min, 2 min, 3 min, and 4 min poem – get there at 7:30 to sign up and we’ll get things started at 8:00.
If on the other hand, you’re comin’ to watch.
Just bring 4$ to the doorman and we’ll have a seat ready.
Abe Becker is featuring, fully ready to rip at the November 23rd Legendary Indie Slam. Abe literally injured himself in the middle of a feature set at the Starry Plough in Berkeley and STILL finished his set. It takes some balls, heart, and real love of the art to fall off a stage, bust up not one but BOTH of your wrists, and still get back up on stage and spit with your whole heart, and Abe Becker is just the kind of incredible cat that can do that. Abe made finals stages twice with the Cal Slam team from 2007-2009, and has been a member of the 2008 and 2009 Berkeley Slam Nationals team, bringing home the gold as Grand Slam Champion for Berkeley in 2008 and 1st place in the team piece competition at NPS 2009. He is one third of Aerosol Love Letter Campaign, a group he formed with Matt Blesse and Terry Taplin, also of Cal Slam. The Campaign is touring the country in the Spring of 2010, spreading the good words to empower poets and activists. He writes like sober drunks pray, and he is perpetually confused and charming. He makes rather LOUD mistakes.
Aside from our kickass feature, we’ve got the man, the myth, the hipster-hoodied wonder Kevin Holmes heading up the writer’s workshop starting at 6:30 in the Cypress Lounge. Whether you’re considering hitting the stage for the first time, you’re an old dog trying to learn some new tricks, or you want some input on your work, he’s got you covered like galoshes. The workshop is an all-welcome forum for free writes, edits, and performance critiques, so show up early if you’re interested in getting a leg up for this and future slams!
Then at 8:00 it’s going to be time for the Legendary Indie Slam! For the first time in our brief history, we will be featuring an open mic segment prior to the slam! All poets should arrive by 7:30 for sign-ups.
The Indie Slam will be held at The Cypress Lounge, located at 120 Union St. in downtown Santa Cruz, just off Cedar St. near the Red. As always entry is $4 at the door, with a $1 discount EACH for groups of FIVE or more, so bring your friends and save some of those precious duckets, me droogies!
Next Monday, October 26, we have another slam going down at the one and only Cypress Lounge. This time the feature will be Jason McBeth!
Jason McBeth took second place at the 2008 Individual World Poetry Slam and is the five time Grand Slam champion of Ashland, OR.
He’ll be bringing the fire and so will 10 poets. Sign-ups are always open so if you’ve got poems, come spit! Just be sure to be prepared with a 1 minute, 2 minute, 3 minute, and 4 minute poem to make it through the night. Cash prizes are awarded for the top 2 poets of each slam.
And for a bonus, I’ve got a tasty tidbit for you straight from our organizer meetings. It has been decided that this year, Santa Cruz will be sending one of our wonder woman wordsmiths to the Women of the World Poetry Slam to be held in Columbus, OH! So ladies, come bring the fire and get on the points board to qualify for a special finals night to decide the representative!
And on top of that, we’ve also decided we will be sending a team to the 2010 NATIONAL POETRY SLAM! Qualifying for this is also going on, so come and rip it to qualify for a chance to represent our little hamlet against hundreds of the best poets from all around the country!
–The Cypress Lounge is located at 120 Union St. in downtown Santa Cruz, just off Cedar St. While the establishment does sell alcohol (and delicious food), the show is ALL AGES!
–Admission to the show is $4 each, with special discounts available for groups of 5 or more.
–Show is at 8:00, poets sign-up at 7:30
Our own Kevin Holmes will also be doing a workshop immediately before the slam from 6:00 onward. Bring blank paper for free writes, a new poem you want edited or workshopped, or an old piece on which you’d like performance critiques. It’s a great chance for anyone attending, competing or not, to get some hands-on time for their poetry with one of the best poets Santa Cruz has to offer, so don’t miss out! These will likely continue to go on before the slam for the foreseeable future also.
Oh it was close. Oh yeah. Final round poets were all within .2 of each other. Point 2!!!
Finals always is crazy.
Highlights included Jack Rusks round one poem about building a house that turned into a metaphor for building a community and a life. Round one also brought us one of my favorite John Staedler poems… and the judges hated on the funny. Why judges? Why can’t poets be funny. Round two highlights included Dusty Rose’s stellar performance of a classic. In round three the poets were: Dusty Rose (who won round one, round two, and scored a perfect 30 in round three); Lee Knight Jr. (who brought the experience and passion of classic work); Lyrical I (who ripped a poem about love dedicated to his grandmother that had passed away the very day); and Al Moyer (reading the most moving performance of his poem ‘blood stains’ that I have ever seen).
What a night to remember.
Al and Lee Knight TIED in the third round, yes, this meant that the final round would be a three poets deep.
In the final round Dusty delivered it strong, and for some reason the judges decided they weren’t feelin’ it enough to give her the 29.8 that she needed to lock the other poets out (we do cumilative 3rd and 4th rounds). Lee Knight tore up the stage, getting the dirty high score, but had a TIME PENALTY in the 4 min round. BOOO. Al didn’t flinch, didn’t stumble, and Santa Cruz has its IWPS representative. Let’s give it up to all of the poets who read and made the night happen. To all of the audience members who came out (the slam covered IWPS registration!). And to the organizers that make this thing happen.
the poets don’t take their craft lightly.
The indie slam had all of the poets in the first round throwing it down for their spot in the second. Possibly the best second round this slam has seen – John Staedler’s poem featured long sections of him… buzzing. Just buzzing. Tessa went off mic and into the audience to “read our bones.” Both Bekka and Lyrical I brought it raw and personal. New poet Drew gave a unique and confidant performance that landed him, along with John, Tessa and Lyrical in the fourth round. Head to head final round had both John and Tessa ripping their standards like a polaroid picture of an ex. In the end, Tessa took the crown with “Helen of Troy.”
We thought we were getting Kat Dietrech as our feature… but, it turned out to be an entire San Jose NPS team and their coach Jen Genius too!!! Kat and Chris’ daughter poem pulled on our heart strings, Jen and Dave’s enacted a cereal killer romance on stage, Kristina brought a dark love poem with metaphors between bruises and beauty marks.
Santa Cruz is heating up.
As we get closer to Indie finals the poets are… starting to care?
And you can see it in their stage performances.
Lisa Straehley opened the competition strong, cementing a spot in the second round.
Chris Harbster pulled the high score of the first round with a schizophrenic love poem.
In the second round slam regular Lyrical I and new poet Keith both ripped it, however, they met elimination.
The third round saw Lewis and Clark poet Tessa asking Helen of Troy if anybody has ever “taken her to lunch.” Straehley read a new poem about unicorns in Afghanistan scoring a resounding 27 even . . . which tied the poet who read before her Chris Harbster.
This meant that Lisa and Chris would go into the head to head fourth round with even scores.
In the fourth round, I had to ask myself is their a mental patient on the loose? A blind seer? No wait, it’s Chris Harbster taking first place!
Outside of the competition, the audience couldn’t get enough of our feature Lucky 7.
Lucky decided to do extended versions of many of her poems while also finding moments in each of them to personalize them to the audience. She read her Henney Penney poem directly to/about Santa Cruz weed. During Sock the Pickle she called out a number of audience members, including the nights MC Kevin Holmes.
