March 26, 2017
I’m delighted to be the featured performer on the evening of Sunday, April 9th at POET NYC and SLAMFIND at Bowery Poetry…led by Mason Granger at one of my favorite venues in the world. I’ll be reading about 20 minutes of all new work from my project on human rights and resistance in the US-Mexico Border region.
Mason Granger is the creator & owner of SlamFind. He also tours with the performance poetry trio, Mayhem Poets, and consults for the social justice-oriented speakers bureau, Strength of Doves. The best professional advice he ever received was from a clown who said: “Be good at what you do, be on time, be easy to work with, and you’ll always have work.” Smart guy, that clown.
A current New Yorker originally from Willingboro NJ (the most talented small town in America!), Mason did his undergrad work at Rutgers University in New Brunswick NJ where he began writing & performing at the student-run poetry open mic, Verbal Mayhem. After a few years as a regular there, he co-hosted & organized the event for another few years from 2003-06. Within that span, he also began performing with The Mayhem Poets, bringing his engaging brand of poetry into the K-12 & collegiate education realm.
Mason believes that changing society is much like giving medicine to your dog. If you try to shove a pill down your dog’s throat, it will resist, fight back, and run away from you. However, if you wrap the pill in a treat and make the dog WANT to consume it, then it’s much more likely to take the medicine and thus, feel the positive effects— a win/win for all involved. Mason’s brand of uniquely engaging poetry works the same way. Individuals leave his shows with a changed perspective on many pressing 21st century issues (such as climate change, health/nutrition, etc.) AND having had a damn good time in the process. And since society is nothing more than a collection of individuals, enough changed minds equals one changed world.
SlamFind was born out of need, plain and simple. Full time for 10+ years, The Mayhem Poets would perform for an audience of young people who’d leave the show hungry for more live poetry, yet there were no resources available for the vast majority of them to turn their newfound inspiration into a lifelong engagement. Meanwhile, online videos of live poetry performances were getting hundreds of millions of views worldwide, proving that the hunger was out there and growing… if only there was an easy-to-use resource to help turn those live poetry views into live poetry participants. Fast forward a couple years of hard work: SlamFind.