Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 5, 1994 TAG: 9409010006
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Deep in the heart of Tokyo Sony engineers use `On Golden Pond' for cinemagraphic warfare. Dolly Parton works nine to fi...." His voice trailed off into the din and smoke of the bar. The microphone had come unplugged in his hand.
Cohen, who describes himself as a "non-linear artist" who has yet to make any money at it, regained his composure and finished the poem.
His effort rated him scores of seven and eight. It also prompted judge Steve Wills, a Roanoke lawyer, to comment, "Mr. Microphone buys American."
Cohen was one of about 20 poets to perform at Tuesday's poetry slam at the Iroquois Club in Roanoke. He wasn't the only one to get verbally jabbed and poked by Wills and the other judges.
"One more beer, and it might make sense," Wills said about another poem.
"Eva Gabor head-hunter wannabe pee-pee boy," judge Siobhan Lowe-Matuk said about Sean Jones. Jones was decked out in a silk shirt and pants with a stringy white-blond wig. "The outfit works," said another judge.
The slams, organized by Maria Kusznir, another local lawyer, began in November 1992 and have been going strong ever since. But this one was buzzing with importance.
The Roanoke group, one of about 35 of its kind in the country, is sending a team to Asheville, N.C., from August 17-21 to compete in the national poetry slam competition.
The team, made up of Lowe-Matuk, also known as "Shamama," Nick Glennon, Patricia Johnson and Julia Delbridge, will compete with 24 other teams in head to head, single-elimination slamming.
"There's some really prodigious talent [on the other teams]," Kusznir says. "I'm happy just to be involved with these people, but I think we'll do well."
Lowe-Matuk, er, Shamama agrees.
"We're becoming more buff," she says. "We're on psychic steroids."
Delbridge wasn't at the slam Tuesday night because she is performing on the Lollapalooza alternative-rock music tour, but Shamama and the others each tried out some of their material on the crowd of around 75 people.
Johnson, a local actress, is a tall woman with gray streaks in her hair. She approaches subjects like starvation in Rwanda, racism and black pride with fierce dignity.
Glennon, a 38-year-old textile worker living in Floyd, made an eloquent defense of being a straight, white male that contained this gem of a line: "If I had both oars, you can bet they wouldn't be in the water."
Shamama, a sassy, bare-footed professional mid-wife and mother of four, shucked and jived about the stage. She raved about "sexual schizophrenia," discussed assorted sexual organs in the vernacular and eventually scandalized a few younger guests who headed for the door.
The presence of Shamama's friend, a fellow named East Bay Ray, was another reason for the air of importance at the slam.
Ray, who would not reveal his real last name, is the former bass player and a founding member of the legendary punk band The Dead Kennedys.
"I'm here to bring the big-city perspective to the whole thing," he said in a mock Southern twang. Ray, who lives in Oakland, Calif., and Shamama met in San Francisco in the late-'70s and early '80s, when he was blasting out such anti-establishment classics as "Holiday in Cambodia" and "Let's Lynch the Landlord," and she was doing bird calls with a band called the Mutants. She now lives in Floyd.
But even without East Bay Ray, the poetry slams have steadily become more popular.
The competition format, in which poet's read - some say it's more like performance art - and receive scores and sometimes jeers from a team of judges, begun in 1986 by Chicago poet Marc Smith. Since then, they've sprung up all over the country.
Kusznir says the Roanoke slams now draw as many as 30 readers a night. She says she's considering letting in all new readers and holding a lottery for more experienced poets to get into the competition. "We hate to leave anybody out," she says.
by CNB