The Ann Arbor Poetry Slam is committed to continuing the tradition of bringing Slam Champions to our fair city. The March 7th Slam will be no exception. We are proud to present Buddy Wakefield.
His bio courtesy of his website:
BUDDY WAKEFIELD is the 2005 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion. He is also the 2004 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion thanks to the support of anthropologist and producer Norman Lear.
Born in Shreveport, LA, mostly raised in Baytown, TX, now claiming Seattle, WA as home, Wakefield has been a busker in Amsterdam, a lumberjack in Norway, a street vendor in Spain, a team leader in Singapore, a re-delivery boy, a candy maker, a street sweeper, a bartender, a maid, a construction worker, manager of a CD store, a bull rider and a booking agent.
In the spring of 2001 Buddy left his position as the executive assistant at a biomedical firm in Gig Harbor, WA, sold or gave away all he owned and moved into the small, mobile town of Honda Civic to tour every major poetry venue in America and Canada through August of 2003. He is currently landed in Seattle as the manager and founder of The Bullhorn Collective (an agency made up of 30 of the highest ranking Slam Poets and most accomplished performance poets in the world).
Buddy successfully defended his World Championship title at the 2004 International Poetry Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands against the national champs from seven European countries, and has been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, CBC, NPR and the BBC. Wakefield is also the 2003 Seattle Poetry Grand Slam Champion, the proud brother of Princess Sandy Beasley, and was voted Favorite Poet at the 2002 Midwest Poet’s Choice Awards as well as Best Featured Slam Poet 2001-`03, Arizona. His work has been used to win national collegiate forensics competitions and is published internationally. Buddy, a Board of Directors member with Youth Speaks Seattle, is known for delivering raw, rounded, high vibration performances of humor and heart while shifting social paradigms and assaulting cross-cultural barriers through powerful accounts of release.
Poetry Cross Training Conference happens June 29-July 2, 2006. Check it out at www.poetrycamp.com and see what it is all about. The good news is that I’ve been given two $100 scholarships to distribute as I see fit. My first criteria in spreading this money around is to make it available to regular attendees at the Ann Arbor Poetry Slam. Interested? If not, I’ll let the scholarship money go somewhere else. We need to get your reservation fee of $100 paid as soon as possible to assure you can attend. Not later than April 15.
This is a great experience and one I promise will improve both your writing skills and your performance abilities. You’ll love it.
Steve
Hello again, Friend.
I hope I didn’t alarm you by my single missive and then the ensuing absence. It was wholly unintentional. I didn’t want to give you the impression that this Ricky* of ours had closed up so soon after it had opened. It does indeed remain open, though I have no idea how long it might stay that way. My knowledge concerning its dynamics is no better than yours. I can only posit theories, and it’s entirely possible that my previous theory – that this Ricky had suddenly opened the day I began to receive your universe’s Internet on my computer – may be wrong. It may have always been there, waiting for the perfect conditions that would enable me to discover it. Goddess only knows.
Yes, I touched on religion in my first note – in fact, the absurd beliefs of some of your rulers there in what you call the United States of America were what originally prompted my fear that my own universe might somehow become infected by yours via this odd portal – but I see now that a few of you have some even goofier notions, so much goofier, in fact, that I’m no longer afraid of any sort of thought virus you might send. It’s simply too ridiculous to be afraid of you kooks.
The religion in which I was brought up believes in dual gods – or rather, a God and a Goddess – one compassionate, the other vengeful. It shouldn’t take much thought to figure out which gender is which. But people who were brought up in this faith tend to believe that the Goddess is for praying to and the God is for swearing at. The simple explanation for this is that women seem to be better listeners. This religion (and I’ve yet to find any evidence of its existence in your universe, and trust me, I’ve looked) is called Nucleology, as in the nucleus of an atom, I suppose, which, cosmically speaking, requires two to tango, unless we’re talking about hydrogen, but we need not concern ourselves with a science lesson at the moment, especially since you’re probably smarter about it than I am. But one of Nucleology’s problems (of which, like any religion, there are a multitude) is that God – the One Who doesn’t listen very well – has most of the power, whereas Goddess – the One Who is compassionate and retains information – is relatively powerless, because, I suppose, the compassionate always wind up with the rotten end of the deal. What results is that Goddess is required to take your petition to God. As I said, Nucleology’s got its problems, but it’s rather convenient for those of us who are virtually without faith anyway. You hear a lot of phrases like “Goddess tried” and “Deaf God” and my own particular favorite, “Goddess only knows,” with its implied rejoinder, and God isn’t listening. (There is also the phrase “God-damn-it,” apparently popular in your universe as well, but I doubt that when you say it you also have in mind its own implied answer, because Goddess isn’t that cruel.) What little faith I have left in Nucleology mainly involves an image of God and Goddess in some sort of divine high-rise apartment somewhere, perpetually bickering. It’s the recovering Nucleologist’s tendency, when there’s a particularly nasty thunderstorm or natural disaster, to conclude that God is having a tantrum again because Goddess has once more bested Him in an argument. Nucleology may seem a bit ineffectual to those of you who damn people to hell for their sexual preferences or throw bombs at one another over a couple of cartoons, but that’s what most Nucleologists like about Nucleology – its harmlessness. The very best quality of any religion, in my mind, is that it do little to no harm.
That is not why I’ve been away, though. I’ve been busy trying to figure out what, exactly, a poetry slam is. I think I have a fairly good idea of what it is now, though if I’m wrong, the only way you can set me straight is by leaving a note on this web site. I encourage that, in fact. How often do you get the chance to speak to someone who exists in an entirely Other Universe? (I make an exception for your version of Laura Bush, of course, who happens to live with just such an individual.) This, though, is what I’ve gleaned: competitors are required to be entertaining for three minutes, at the end of which time they’re scored, like in the Olympics. Even though you call it a poetry slam, the “poet” doesn’t necessarily have to be poetic, just as long as he’s entertaining. (I use the personal pronoun ‘he’ here because a slam poet cannot possibly be a good listener, what with the fact that he seems to try to fill every single nanosecond of those three minutes with words.) There seems to be an emphasis on performance. Oh, and the “poet” with the highest score gets a prize or something.
It rather reminds me of the Kill the President contests we have in my universe. The process is the same (including the emphasis on performance), except contestants don’t pretend to have composed poetry; instead, they describe how they, if given the opportunity, would end their president’s life. These contests are not limited to the American United States – they occur in just about every country that has a president – so some of the contests are international, just as your poetry slam has apparently become. It’s obvious why you have poetry slams instead. Evidently, in your United States of America, it’s illegal to talk about killing the president. Maybe you should change that law. You’ve certainly had your share of assassinated presidents, so having such a law doesn’t seem to be doing you any good.
Judging by the few “slam poems” I’ve been able to witness on your Internet, the politics of your poetry slams tend to lean toward the left, so maybe this is the sole purpose of these events: to take out political frustrations that would otherwise be alleviated by being able to freely discuss how you would like to quicken things to the moment when your president is forced to make peace with his God. (It’s not necessary to make peace with your Goddess, of course. That’s rarely the problem.)
We also like euphemisms in this universe (as I said previously, the similarities are more multitudinous than the differences), but I think we like them a bit more than you, so perhaps your universe is a sliver more honest than ours. But I’m fairly proud of that one for death: to quicken things to the moment when you’re forced to make peace with your God. Perhaps I should start a contest for the most convoluted euphemisms. Something to think about, before I talk to you again….
Here’s hoping that the moment when you’re forced to make peace with your God is postponed indefinitely,
– Mike Ivy
From The Next Universe Over
* Random isolated cusp incursion – or Ricky for short.
It was unbelieveable how awsome the competition in Charlotte was. I am still wrecked form Finals night, so I’ll post more details later. I can tell you that our poet Versiz was on the finals stage, and Ann Arbor favorite Logic the Tiny Dancer was crowned Haiku Champion of the World! Don’t forget to come out to the Slam on Tuesday, we’ll talk more then!
From Poetry Slam, Inc.:
For Immediate Release
February 6th, 2006
Queen City Wild for 2006 Individual World Poetry Slam
February 1st - 4th, 2006
Spirit Square, Charlotte, North Carolina
CHARLOTTE, NC — The 2006 Individual World Poetry Slam stormed Charlotte’s Spirit Square this past weekend with 72 performers from 7 countries and 25 US states, performing before thousands of local spectators. The four day festival culminated with the top 12 poets bringing their best game in fierce competition, electrifying the crowd as Mike McGee of San Jose captured the crown by fractions of a point. Like all slam events, the Champion was chosen by the five judges picked randomly from the audience! Please see (www.poetryslam.com) for more information.
Mike McGee is the 2006 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion, as well as the 2003 Indie National Poetry Slam Champion and the 2003 West Coast Slam Champion. Mike McGee (www.mikemcgee.net) has appeared on Def Poetry Jam’s 2005 Season. Mike calls his performance style “stand up poetry” and believes wholeheartedly that humor heals, or at least eases the wounds of life and all of its growing pains. Mike was born with the birth defect Spina Bifida and hopes to raise awarness of the defect through his work.
This year’s World Poetry Slam also celebrated a dramatically higher number of women participating with 5 slam sisters making it to the finals stage, including 2004 Indie National Poetry Slam Champion, Sonya Renee and 2004 National Poetry Slam finalist Andrea Gibson and Rachel McKibbens, Stephanie Williams and Krissi Reeves.
Several local poets also made it to the finals stage including Charlotte’s own “Q” and Da Minista and Basik Knowledge from South Carolina. The field was filled out with Versiz, Jared Paul and runner up Joaquin Zihuatenajo.
Next year the event will be held in Vancouver. The Individual World Poetry Slam 2006 was sponsored by Poetry Slam Inc., Slam Charlotte, Creative Loafing, and the NC Blumenthal Performing Arts Education Institute.
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For photos and interviews please contact Kimberly Simms at kimberly@witsendpoetry.com or 864.525.6957.