Word Warriors Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Cast of Characters

  On Sister Spit

  Protégée

  Lost and Found

  On Mothers and mothertongue

  Lyrical Self-Defense and the Reluctant Female Rapper

  A Mad Poet’s Manifesto

  The Dirtiest Word You’ve Ever Heard

  Slam Ma’am

  Stumbling In

  Page for a Day

  Making a Name

  A Choir is Born

  What I Remember

  Turn it Down a Notch

  In My Own English

  From Inside

  Body Sanctuary

  Shaking It Off

  My Longest Relationship

  We All Leave Something

  Ad-Libbing

  Working Luck

  In Other Words

  In and Out of Spoken Word

  Taco Shop Tales

  You Say You Want a Revolution ...

  Spilling Ink

  Good Sista/ Bad Sista

  A Boy Among Weemoon

  Poet for the People

  Exceeding Expectations

  Name-Calling

  Acknowledgements

  About the Contributors

  About the Editor

  Credits

  Selected Titles

  Copyright Page

  This book is dedicated to my mom, Laura Katz Olson,

  for dressing me in blue overalls

  and for gifting me with the bright side.

  Eve Ensler

  The Way Girls Word

  I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THESE WOMEN, THESE words, these fierce flying no scheming, no vetted, no trying to land in the white house or sell me a toaster words. These words that grow in the jungles of the bellies of these women who stand on land they never owned or felt at home but the words grow and make a place a space for the others to live. Words in the mouths of these women slam, shoot like alphabet guns, fire fast digit letters and sounds into silence, into the invisible that lives forever visible right in front of us, the invisible that can’t be spoken until it’s spoken and so these brave chicks speak and speak, “breathless red faced and pissed off.” Speak the heretical, speak the blood body, speak not as representatives of their dark skinned selves or dyke diving selves or Gaza stripped selves. Not representing but presenting, not claiming we, but an unapologetic escalating have to say it see it be it me, me that is jammed slammed stuck in the dead center of invisible wastelands; malls, the too beautiful suburban roads, mean anonymous streets, soap opera reality TV symphonies. Me, me that has been so fucking programmed, conditioned to be skinny white ass, not taking up too much space, not round, not black, not female, not ethnic, not loud. Girl words the way girls word, the way pussies poem, not all proper theoretical proving a point. Pussies don’t need to prove points they need to create magic and sound alarms and wipe the blood off the wall. Not just clever words so you marvel at their abilities and memorization skills, you never really really hear those words. It’s pussy, not personality, pussy not all sexual on your lap, on her back. No—pussy words that have to say it see it have to chomp down wrap their mouth, their verbal staccato hips coming straight from the adjective quick wet—get off me. Get back. Come stand by me. Not yet. Go deep. Now slow.

  Words, better than bullets cause they don’t lodge and kill, they lodge and spin, lodge and free, lodge and learn, lodge and spread like possibility through the whole fucking system. The story can be told. It lives in these word warriors, in their outrageous spells and tells. It lives in their bus rides and bar fights. It lives in their pierces and tears. It lives in the trans planes and trains traveling them through gender and Georgia, nepalm and bras, traveling through this concept this memory this made up dreamed up mad desire still desiring America.

  Count on these girls, these pussy pointing spraying their wet word poems, these poetry midwives with their pushing and breathing anarchic rhyming and dominatrix thing, rapping, rapping slamming releasing, bringing us, birthing us, wording us home.

  Alix Olson

  Introduction

  ORAL TRADITION HAS BEEN INTEGRAL TO women’s experience since the beginning of recorded time. Women, often denied access to writing and reading skills and materials throughout (his)story, have verbally passed down individual stories, documented poetry, preserved recipes for physical and emotional healing, and ensured survival of what might otherwise be lost or suppressed in a male-dominated world. I consider this past collective amalgamation of voices to be the true backdrop for the current women’s spoken word movement.

  However, the popular phenomenon and relatively new cultural art form, known as “slam poetry,” is probably most specifically responsible for the recent upsurge in spoken word poetry overall. Slam poetry began in the United States in the 1980s, when Marc Smith, a blue-collar Chicago worker with an affinity for verse, decided to prompt the resurgence of poetry in the “average” person’s life. He implemented a format wherein each person would have three minutes to perform and, in an effort to keep poetry palatable, engaging, and in keeping with a U.S. competitive sports mentality, audience members were randomly tapped as “judges.” This design not only allowed for poetry to be redemocratized, but also provided it with an anticapitalist and antiestablishment flair. Anyone could do it, anyone could be good at it, and the “winner” was not in the hands of an “expert,” but rather at the mercy of the crowd.

  As a result of Smith’s concept, poetry began to enjoy a rapid reentry into the national consciousness. Regional slam poetry venues popped up all over the country and, soon, all across the globe. A national slam was implemented, with teams composed of the winners from cities nationwide. Shortly thereafter, a world slam was created. Poetry was no longer owned by the publishers, academia, or the literary elite.

  I first heard about “slam poetry” from Kate Rushin, my African American Women’s Poetry professor at Wesleyan University. Not only had Kate written the inimitable poem “This Bridge Poem” (which was part of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe L. Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa), she also gave spoken word performances around campus—reading in an ardent but mellifluous voice. I was spellbound (and a little in love).

  One day in class, Kate mentioned the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City, a venue that might be fitting for some of her students’ particular brand of rather “unruly” poetry. It was also, she implied, a radical forum for continuing postcollege education. Petrified, but thrilled about life outside of my prepackaged and stamped learning center, I had the address of the Nuyorican memorized by graduation day.

  On one of my first evenings in New York City, I left my new roommate and close friend to unpack our small box of dusty kitchen appliances, and position our scuffed futon. I tucked some poems into my windbreaker pocket and anxiously orange-line-subwayed to the Lower East Side.

  That early September evening altered my correlative personal, artistic, and professional worlds forever. In fact, becoming a part of slam poetry’s planet was quite likely the most influential episode of my life. The words on that open mic stage exploded before me like a personal pyrotechnics display: electric, sparkly, in bold bursts of fierce authenticity and shining life testimonies. The shoulderto-shoulder crowd was exuberant—the applause a mix of stomps, shrieks, and howls, heads casually tossed back in laughter. It was unlike any response to poetry I had ever envisaged. My poetry had finally sited her audacious ancestral sanctuary.

  In addition to my poetry, I had also subconsciously brought along another significant item: a sharply attuned queer-feminist nose, one that had been burie
d in women’s and gender studies books for the past four years, and so one that quickly sniffed out the slam scene sexism like a newly radicalized crime dog. I noted not only the misogyny in too many of the poems, but also the heavy male domination onstage, even within that progressive poetic lexicon, the “artistic democracy” known as slam.

  I flipped through my papers, nervously. Was this urban underbelly, for a white dyke with newly cropped hair from a decidedly small Pennsylvania town, really the right spot to showcase her potentially immature “angry feminism”? Bolstered by the synergy of the space, however, and by a righteous stubborn demeanor, I stomped toward the sign-up list for the open mic. The response was enthusiastic. I was awarded a spot in that Friday’s slam competition, and I went on to become a member of the 1998 Nuyorican Slam Team. My teammates were a Puerto Rican revolutionary man, a Trinidadian feminist woman, and a socialist-informed white guy with two lesbian mothers; our mentor, and ringleader of the Nuyorican at the time, was Keith Roach, a former Black Panther. I jokingly referred to our team as the Rainbow Poet-lition. We won first place at the National Poetry Slam competition in Austin, Texas, toured nationally as a group for the next year, and signed a book deal with Soft Skull Press (Burning Down the House). I believe that the reason we were so fundamentally successful as a group is that we each approached our art from a different identity-based vantage point, but with a common pathos and political ideology. We individually drew different types of audiences and, together, it was a beautifully sundry crowd. Shortly thereafter, we each went on to develop independent spoken word careers.

  I booked my first tour by contacting slam venues across the country, begging to be featured at their open mic events, and slowly these nights connected dot by dot into a two-month tour. I distributed my first handmade spoken word tape, the covers individually cut and folded by my group of friends, hunched over pizza in my living room for a week. Tracks from the collection began to circulate on mix tapes, and I began to be invited to college campuses, primarily by the women’s and LGBT centers.

  It was really only then, once I began to plunge into the life of a full-time touring artist—and to look for women spoken word mentors and allies, whose lives I might imitate, or at the very least borrow from—that I began to notice once again the underrepresentation of feminist and/or queer voices within the movement. Certainly, I was aware of the formidable troupe of touring artists known as Sister Spit, as well as of women like Patricia Smith, Jessica Care Moore, and Lisa King, poets who were well known on a national level. However, women’s voices, on a professional level, still seemed sparse. The few spoken word anthologies that I gobbled up were mainly edited and foreworded by men, the movies made about slam poetry were produced by men and revolved around male characters, the majority of the regional venues where I performed were run by men, and many of the acknowledged originators of the movement were tagged “forefathers”—the creator of “the slam,” the founders of the Nuyorican, the beatniks credited for the style, the rappers who were considered artistic cousins, and so on and so on.

  And yet, as the spoken word movement began to gain momentum over the following decade, it also began to acquire an increasing number of women’s voices. Women, quite familiar with the tenet that “the personal is political,” caught on quickly to slam poetry’s populist notion, and were more than ready to add their truth(s) to the tapestry, contributing invigorating voices of protest, reflection, and resistance. The combination of the eminent slam movement and the upsurge of our bold underground feminism(s) began to create a unique pool of women verbally challenging society on all fronts. Since my first foray into the movement, I have witnessed spoken word develop as one of the most undiluted expressions of art available to women, particularly as a vehicle for social change.

  Indeed, this demanding oral poetry of the early twenty-first century began to define a vanguard of lithely muscled voices—women who think and act decisively to create their distinctive and desperately earned realities. These female spoken word artists have become spokeswomen for a new generation.

  When I was asked to edit the first U.S. collection of women spoken word leaders, I felt a salmagundi of emotions: excited about the opportunity, relieved that the documentation of these women’s voices would finally come to fruition, but mostly, anxious. How could I possibly begin to amass these voices; how would I know who to include, or what it meant to be “a leader in this movement”?

  I started from scratch, first pinpointing other touring artists I had shared stages with at festivals, conferences, and rallies. Because I tour for a living, I also had ample access to the artists people were talking about: what spoken word CDs the college students had blaring in their cars when they picked me up at the airport; which artists’ poems were tacked up in women’s and LGBT centers; whose work was discussed when I forced myself into the world of the Internet. Little by little, I composed a list of both recently emerged and long-renowned women spoken word leaders.

  The women contained within these pages are the new keynote speakers at feminist organizations’ annual conferences and inspire the masses at national marches on Washington. They kick off college Take Back the Night events and LGBT rallies and serve as the feature speakers for university awareness months of all kinds. Collectively, these women have been on the covers of dozens of magazines, had full-length features in The New York Times, appeared on HBO and CNN, and won Tony Awards for more than one spoken word Broadway show. They have toured countless countries with their art, garnered innumerable awards, fellowships, and book prizes, and topped best-seller lists. These contributors draw hundreds of expectant faces in the tiniest of communities, and thousands at national and international festivals. With origins in spoken word and/or slam poetry, these women are also now successful bandleaders, hip-hop artists, playwrights, actors, and novelists.

  Word Warriors is a collection of some of the most influential female spoken word artists in the movement, the writer-rock stars of our time. And even though all of these female spoken word artists have become well known and have had a profound influence on the movement, the idea for a collection that honors their contributions has somehow slipped under the mainstream publishing radar. Word Warriors is not only the first U.S. all-women spoken word anthology, but also, unimaginably, the first time that women make up more than 50 percent of a spoken word anthology’s contributors.

  The contributors offer original essays about pivotal moments and significant experiences within their spoken word careers, accompanied by two spoken word pieces, one well-known work and one new and/or unpublished poem. Each essay offers an illuminating peek into the artist’s thought process, a rare chance for the reader to become intimate with the poet.

  I am honored to include work by Tony Award-winner Sarah Jones, who discusses her incredible transformation from spoken word artist to Broadway dramatist/actress, as well as by remarkable spoken word foremother Patricia Smith, who encourages us to listen to the Baptist preacher, the pump jockey, kids, our lovers, or drivers cursing in traffic as inspiration for our art. Multiple-award-winning author Michelle Tea contributes her always resoundingly original stream-of-consciousness reflections upon her Sister Spit touring years, while my discussion with Palestinian-born Suheir Hammad includes an honest reflection upon writing her first poem about a young uncle killed as a resistance fighter during the Palestinian liberation movement. We learn how being watched onstage “out of openness, not abnormality” shifted Natalie E. Illum’s understanding of her physical disability, and how fat activist Nomy Lamm performed for years, balancing her growing strength with a prosthetic leg that once broke in the middle of a tour. Southern gentleman and self-identified “cowboy-loving Jewish transsexual” Katz exposes how words have served as “a personal brand of revival” and survival, while openly intersex artist Thea Hillman explains how this performance genre has given her the tools to empower herself more fully. And so on, and so on, these voices laugh, argue, retaliate, shudder, and dance through the pages.

&n
bsp; Poetry should, Adrienne Rich argues, break the silence, forcing us to ask, “what kind of voice is breaking silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?” It is inarguable that this anthology shatters sound barriers across the board. These poets build upon our political and feminist/womanist vertebrae, contributing unabashed and flawed, precise and untethered voices to the spine of persistence.

  It is a kind of hokey-pokey we spoken word artists are forced to play, one foot in and one foot out of mainstream existence. Together, we form this essential community, a hip-hop ballet—coming together, twirling, lifting, dizzyingly determined to be en pointe.

  I invite you to join this crazy dance: to write, speak out, and challenge these thoughts and your own, to plug into the movement that uses language to claim, reclaim, and rediscover this tattered but glorious world.

  Sarah Jones

  Cast of Characters

  SARAH JONES IS A TONY AWARD-WINNING POET, playwright, and performer whose latest Broadway production, Bridge and Tunnel, was produced by Meryl Streep. Jones’s career has taken her from a sold-out run at the Kennedy Center to tours in India, Europe, and South Africa, and to performances for such audiences as the United Nations, members of the U.S. Congress, and the Supreme Court of Nepal. Jones sat down for a chat with anthology editor Alix Olson to reflect upon their old Nuyorican days, her successful lawsuit against the FCC, and her creative process.

  You embrace the power of language so organically. Was your family one that promoted a culture of words and strong political beliefs?

  My parents were both undergraduate students when they got married, so I was born into a house full of textbooks, volumes of poetry, spoken word albums, folk song lyrics, and the kinds of verbose discussions you might expect from a mixed-race, mixed-gender group of college students circa the 1970s civil rights, women’s, and antiwar movements. I think my first words were “Power to the people!”