To welcome Poetry Channel & Information Network to About.com Poetry in November 1997, we published this email interview with its editor/instigator/host, the inimitable Juliette Torrez.
Bob Holman: When — and why! — did you start Poetry Channel?
Juliette: It started as a tour diary of the Gas Grub & Grammar Roadshow that happened in June 1996 with Hank Hyena, Lisa Verlo, Victor Infante and myself and grew into a literary gossip column.
bh: You are known for inventing Sofa Surfing as a way of life for the 20th Century Troubadour. What kind of computer/modem do you use?
jt: A Macintosh powerbook sold to me by a Beastie Boy started this all.
Just a few details, darling.... How much did you pay for the Powerbook? What model is it? What modem do you use?
Ummm, none of your business, 140, I don’t know.
You were born in Taos, home of the World Heavyweight Championship Poetry Bout (WHCPB). Was this event influential in your coming out as a poet?
No, I was born in Albuquerque and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. My mother was born in Taos, and the whole brood lives there now. If I had met the WHCPB folks while I was living in Taos, I might not have left — I really dig them. Instead, I went to Albuquerque for college and made it my homebase for about 10 years.
What really happened on Lalapalooza 94?
I-yi-yi, Holman, are you trying to get me in trouble? You were there for a show, you saw it. Yeah, but you didn’t see the worst of it. I wrote a couple of chapbooks about it, naming names and dishing dirt. Mostly, here’s the nutshell: hundreds and hundreds of writers saw the Beastie Boys for free, some writers were ego trippers, nearly everyone got to tell a poem and some more than once. Here’s the other nutshell: the circus came to town one summer and a thousand poets left their regular lives to be a shining star for a while. Some people wanted big things and they got them. Some people wanted big things and they got nothing.
Am I right that you are the jefe of ABQPF, an organizer of SXSW and Austin, and run the library at Taos?
The Albuquerque Poetry Festival is basically a week-long writers party, because I have absolutely no budget to put together respectable. Which is fine. I’ve given up on respectability. It’s an opportunity to showcase some really talented writers from all over the country and put them together in the high desert for a while. It seemed a good idea at the time.
I never organized SXSW, but I was fortunate enough to be invited three times in a row to play in their spoken word showcase. Thanks to Wammo and Mike Henry, I get to see Shappy once a year.
At Taos, I host the slams at the Circus. I’ve been on their board for a couple of years now and I really enjoy working with Anne MacNaughton and Peter Rabbit. The whole Taos scene is very good to me, makes me look forward to the days when I’m done wandering.
Everyone knows you as a saint, a radblunt, and a tattooed virgin. Fewer know you as... Juliette Torrez, Poet! Could you give us a poem?
Who are you talking to, Holman?
Here’s Juliette’s poem:
