Poetry Guide Bob Holman came back from Canada’s Spoken Word Summit 2005 with a whole new required reading/listening list. Take your pick from his top picks!
1. Vow To Poetry, Essays, Interviews & Manifestoes by Anne Waldman
(Coffee House Press, 2001) This book is a MUST, O Poets Searching in the Wilderness for a Curriculum: here’s where the Manifesto becomes the Feminifesto, a grand collection of talks, essays, interviews that calls to mind Ted Berrigan’s On the Level Everyday (Talisman). These are required texts for poet-mind-action, How To Do When There’s Nothing/Everything To Do.
2. Little Stevie Wonder, by Quincy Troupe
(Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005) Quincy’s newest is a children’s book-length poem: “Isn’t he lovely, / this small blind boy, thinking of his fingertips? / Snapping those fingers before unseeing eyes.” Got a CD, too.3. Re:Zoom, by Sheri-D Wilson
(Frontenac House, 2005) At the Spoken Word Summit, Sheri-D Wilson did a set of political love poems that had the audience simultaneously laughing, dancing, and hitting on each other. This is her newest collection of “action poems.”4. Standing Ground, CD by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm
(Nishin Productions, 2004) This is a collaborative production, 12 poems set to music, including performances by Te Kupu, Marcos Arcentales, Raven Kanatakta Polson-Lahache, Joy Harjo, Koru, John Thorp, Rhys B & Luis Abanto. Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm takes the local to the land in her Native turns.5. Invisible Foreground, by David Bateman
(Frontenac House, 2005) Bateman in performance is astonishing, a solo grand guignol opera, he changes costumes and consciousnesses mid-breath with Betty Rubble of the Flintstones, yes that one!, right there on stage to the pulsating beats.6. Women Do This Every Day, by Lillian Allen
(Women’s Press, Ltd., UK, 1994) In 1985, pre-Slam, spoken word was just getting started, and Lillian was already rushing to the barricades with an all-women’s, all-reggae (dub) spoken word album, her magnificent LP Revolutionary Tea Party -- mind blowing! This is a 10-years-after selection of her poems.7. Ashes are Bone and Dust, by Jill Battson
(Insomniac Press, 2001) Jill Battson came to spoken word as a poet, and has become a one-woman work gang, pushing spoken word into the unsuspecting ear of the populace. She says, “I don’t dream, I do” -- and here is a selection of what she’s been doing.8. Soulah Vibe, CD by Rha Goddess
(Divine Dime, 2000) Rha Goddess has seen how hip-hop can turn lives around, and how they could spin out of control over again. She interviewed over a thousand people in the last two years to create the one-woman show the she will soon be touring. If you can’t get to a show, sample this five-year-old CD.