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.