Lewd, Loud, and Proud: Dudes Who Slam Poetry

photo credit: Topdog1

Do you yawn at poetry? Does the idea of reading verse and meter make you want to curl up in a little ball and fall fast asleep? Well, you can forget about that nap because I’m about to show you how poetry can get your blood pounding, your fist pumping, and your belly heaving with snickers, giggles, and guffaws.

In recent centuries, we’ve come to view poetry as a written art form. But it wasn’t always so. Poetry is  an oral tradition and in the last few decades there’s been an uprising among some very hammy poets who’ve taken to the stage and declared slam the next great literary movement.

They are writers and performers. Artists and visionaries. Comedians, philosophers, and nerds. They give good voice. They are lewd, loud, and proud. These are the men of slam poetry.

Taylor Mali

photo credit: BrodieAdler

Taylor Mali is one of the first slam poets I discovered and I was hooked immediately. He’s a brilliant and relevant writer, and his delivery is impeccable. Some slam poets take the performance aspect way over the top while others just mutter their poems without any flair at all. Taylor’s work is absolute perfection, which is why this man has quickly become one of my favorite contemporary poets.

You don’t read Taylor’s poems and you don’t listen to them either. You experience them. The first time I heard him reading What Teachers Make, he had me hollering “Yeah! Take that!” I had never realized that poetry could get me so riled up.

Taylor often explores teaching and education in his work. Like Lilly Like Wilson is another gem that had me grinning and nodding along. Is it a true story? Fiction? I was so inspired by this poem I actually created a character named Lily Wilson and now I have no idea what to do with her. I don’t even know if she’s legal.

It’s not all about education! See if Taylor doesn’t seduce you just a little bit with Giving Good Voice. This piece is surprising, witty, and may as well be the slam anthem for lovers.

Do yourself a favor and learn more about Taylor and his work at taylormali.com.

Shappy Seasholtz

Remember when I said some of these guys take the performance aspect a little over the top? Uncle Shappy leans that way. Nevertheless, he always makes me laugh. Yes, poetry can be funny. It can also be political. But how often have you heard a poem that was both funny and political? Shappy pulls it off with All American A-hole.

Now, we’re all pretty Internet savvy and I know some of you are big old geeks just like me. If you’re a Star Wars fan, let me hear you say ho-oh! You know you want to say it. I can recite Yoda. Why? Because I Am That Nerd.

Check out uncleshappy.com, where you’ll also find a link to Shappy’s girlfriend, slam poet pioneer Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz. She’s currently battling Taylor Mali for the top spot on my favorite poets list. I can pretty much guarantee you’ll hear more about her from me. But we’re talking about the dudes today.

Mayhem Poets

These guys are going to blow your freaking mind. I would even go so far as to say that if you hate poetry, these guys might change your mind. James Chartrand, I am talking to YOU! You can tell me how you don’t like podcasts and poetry until human beings start morphing into wild animals. But you can’t listen to Femail and tell me you don’t like it. A lot. Check it out and have a laugh. It’s on me.

If poetry is magic, these guys are sort of like the arch wizards. You just know they were first in line when Mother Nature was handing out muses. Martin Luther Queen is another captivating example of their lyrical talent. These guys got skill, straight up.

Get all the dirt on these four fine fellows at mayhempoets.com. And do note that they are easy on the eyes as well as the ears.

I Love Mongo

Mongo is THE MAN! He’s the emcee for IndieFeed Performance Poetry and I LOVE Mongo! If it weren’t for him, I would know next to nothing about slam poetry and I’d have no idea that when I travel to New York (if I ever get the chance), my first order of business will be to visit The Bowery Poetry Club. I am filled with gushing gratitude to Mongo for all the hard work he does so that folks like me can become slam addicts. Mongo, you rock!

Be sure to visit the IndieFeed site, which features a list of all the poets and links to the full audio of each  performance that has been featured on the podcast. You can also subscribe via iTunes. I do.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Link Love Mad Libs Writing Exercise for Bloggers

photo credit: germeister

Let’s talk about links.

For some reason, Google thinks links are the cat’s meow. When someone links to your blog, Google says “Hey, people like that blog over there!” And then whoosh — your Google rank goes up while you purr and drool all over your keyboard.

Google is so smart it actually ups your rank even more if the links to your blog come from a website with a lot of clout. And by clout, I mean a site that already has high standing in Googledom. So a link from someone like Dooce is going to make you purr a lot louder than say, a link from me. For now anyway.

Hopefully I don’t have to explain why you want to be on Google’s good side. What I would like to point out is that everybody wants to be on Google’s good side (not just you). You can probably guess where this is going. That’s right, everybody wants incoming links. And if you have a blog, then you have the power to fulfill wishes and make dreams come true.

One way to do this is to write a review of something another blogger wrote or mention bloggers who have inspired your own posts. Another way is to create link lists. The point is, you find a way to link to the ones you love and it’s just like you’re blowing pretty little Google kisses their way.

So link lists are good but guess what’s better? Actual sentences and paragraphs. Yes, Google recognizes the difference between links in a list (they get a nod and perhaps a curt handshake) and links that are embedded in the body of a written post (these get a welcome-to-the-family hug). So, when you construct links in this manner, you’re not blowing kisses, you’re French kissing. What I mean is, links in sentences and paragraphs are WAY better than links in lists.

Recently, I’ve noticed a trend around some of the blogs I frequent, which involves the blogger writing a little story and plugging links (the French kiss kind) into the posts. This is a perfect writing exercise for people like us (that would be you and me) because we are writers and bloggers. It’s a lot like doing mad libs because you write a story and then fill in the blanks with blogs you want to make out with.

Here’s how it works.

photo credit: germeister

My writing journey had been what you might call a sweet unrest until last September when I launched my freelance writing business because I was struck by one of life’s little inspirations. That would be to make a living doing what I love on my own terms.

Within about six weeks, I had launched my career and was happily writing the cyber highway. And while freelancing paid the bills, it was not my life’s greatest ambition. For I had big dreams of writing a novel and having it published, but I harbored fears of the rejecter and publishers who would find flaws in my fiction.

I decided that in addition to peddling my writing as a service, I would embark on a mission to become a better fiction writer. How? Well I started by escaping reality. Later this year, I’ll participate in NaNoWriMo and write a novel in 30 days. Hopefully I’ll finish on time because as you know, punctuality rules.

Now my dreams are starting to manifest in the form of words and pictures. I pray that I succeed so that one day I might be able to buy a cottage of my own. I just hope I don’t end up on any of the Deep Friar’s rant lists.

photo credit: germeister

Now that I’ve made out with all you fine people, try writing a link love mad lib of your own. A few final tips:

• Don’t limit yourself to using anchor text that matches the blog’s title. Use whatever makes sense. [Anchor text is the text that contains the link. Usually it's underlined. Often, it's blue.]
• Likewise, you can link to posts on other blogs, not just to the main page.
• Sadly, you probably won’t fit every blog you love into your link love mad lib. I didn’t. (Sorry guys.)
• You have to choose whether to let the links you want to include drive your post or whether you want it to be story driven. I’m a writer before I’m a blogger so I went with the story.
• Be creative and have fun.

Now, let’s play spin the bottle!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Unleash Your Character

photo credit: kaymoshusband

Did you know that a character will take on a life of its own if you let it?

I hadn’t realized. I mean, I heard about this phenomenon, but I hadn’t really experienced it for myself.

No wonder writers often refer to their books and poems as offspring. When you create a character and let her live and breathe on the page (or on the screen, as the case may be), she starts taking over, making decisions and saying and doing things that you never would. You build a nice foundation and give her the tools she needs to exist in the world and then next thing you know she’s all grown up and calling the shots.

But characters don’t come out of nowhere. You have to start with the basics. A name, age, physical description. Now you have someone who you can picture in your mind. This gives your character flesh and blood but your character needs heart and soul. She needs a history.

You begin at the beginning. Birth. Where and when was she born? What were her parents like? Did she have a joyful childhood or a stormy one? What major events shaped her early years? As she got older, what kind of interests did she develop? Who were her friends?

This is the point where your character first starts making her own decisions. Things start popping into your head. Suddenly your good little girl has a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and she’s sleeping with every guy in town. Your mouth drops and you wonder what happened.

I’m guessing this is where many writers lose their character. They try too hard to control the outcome, failing to recognize that this character has a mind of her own. If you try to shape the character into some mold that you have in mind, she’s going to come across as contrived. Fake. Made up.

And you need your character to be real.

That means you have to know her. And not just how she looks or what her childhood was like. You have to know what kind of attitude she has, how she interacts with others, what her dreams and fears are. Your character is a person (usually) and people are complex organisms.

I have one word for you. It’s a compound word and it’s what gives your character depth: backstory. I know that not every writer develops a detailed backstory for their characters. So this may not apply to you. But I’ve recently learned that if you’re not some adept master fiction writer and you want your character to pack a real punch, backstory can be the key to unlocking your character’s reality.

So what is backstory? It’s your character’s entire history. It’s all that stuff that happened in childhood and then some. It’s those moments that seem insignificant at the time but stick with you for the rest of your life. Backstory is the things your character wants, what she feels, how she views the world. Her spirituality, education, perception, her values and her secrets. it’s what she knows and what she wants to know.

You can write a backstory. I find it helpful both to shape the character and as a warm-up writing exercise. However, I find that the backstory happens even when I’m not working on it. I’ll be making dinner, driving in the car, or listening to music and all of a sudden a little scene will play out. It’s a scene from my character’s life and it has nothing to do with the story I’m working on but it says something about my character and who she is.

Maybe it was the time her grandmother took her to see Cats at the theater. Or the day she filled out her university application — that moment when she dropped it in the mail. Maybe it wasn’t her first kiss, which was nice, but her third kiss, which was wonderful. Maybe it was just some day, some completely unremarkable day when she realized that she loves the sound of the wind whispering through the trees. These little scenes from my character’s past just appear out of nowhere as if the character fairy tucked them into my head while I was sleeping and set them on some kind of timed release.

What’s truly magical is that all of this information comes together and it creates a real person, someone you get to know and understand. When your character is confronted, you know exactly how she’ll respond and you’re delighted and surprised that her reaction is completely opposite of what your own reaction would have been. At first this is confusing. You think — wait, I would never do that. But then you remember that you are not your character. You are merely a vessel through which your character communicates her thoughts and actions.

She’ll say yes to the things you would say no to. She’ll eat things you can’t stand, things like cheesecake. She’ll make decisions that you’d call irresponsible or frivolous. And she’ll spend money that you would stash in the bank.

Your character can be full of surprises like this. But you have to unleash her.

This is not an easy task. But let me tell you something. Once your character is up and running, you’ll have more fun writing than you ever thought possible.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Next Page »