Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to through the Mill podcast that focuses on Mark Smith and all things poetry slam. I'm Hugh Schultz. I'm trying to stand in today for Mark Ellaveld, who is not with us for this episode. And I'll do my best.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Mark, welcome, you listeners. You can now see that he didn't do the big Mark Smith icon of Chicago like Mark does and everything. So that's good.
I don't have to be embarrassed. But today, we're very lucky to have with us Scott woods from Columbus. He's going to be at the Green Mill show tomorrow night as a special guest, and he's one of the leaders of the slam world. He's a legend.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: One of the things I'm really curious about is you've been doing this for almost a quarter century now. Can you tell us a little bit about when you got started, why you got started, how you got started?
[00:00:56] Speaker C: First, thank you for having me. This has been.
This is a singular honor. I owe Mark so much. We'll get into that. But it's real.
Prior to getting into slam, for me, I was just doing open mic. I was running an open mic. We were doing okay, right. Like in Columbus, there wasn't a lot of poetry action, and so we didn't really know what we were doing. We were young, we were black, so we were kind of cut off from the system a little bit. And there wasn't much. There was, like, a couple of readings, but none of them really spoke to each other. They were all very different.
And so around 98, there was a venue that opened up called Snaps and Taps.
Yeah, right. It was very hip.
And they invited Vernell Bristow, who you may remember as a poet.
They asked her to come run a weekly poetry show. And she said, look, come with me to do this. And I said, sure. And so every Wednesday, we. Well, up to. Until a couple of years ago when I retired it 24 years.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Oh, great.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: We ran that show in different places, obviously, but we made it to the end.
Yeah. Cool.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Hey, you know, one thing that came to mind when you. Vernell, when you mentioned her name when I was there, one of the connections that we had, the eccentric people that come to my show, they're part of the show.
You know, they might be marginal people, but we don't. We just. They're just everybody. But when I remember going to your show, you had some eccentric guy. Man, oh, man.
There was one older guy, shorter guy.
I can't remember his name, maybe.
Who were some of those eccentrics that you Had.
[00:02:45] Speaker C: Wow. We had a real rogues gallery.
You're probably referring to Rick.
He would get up and he would do a poem, and it would just be like three lines or something. And then he would sit down and that would be it. He passed away a few years back. Of course.
I was really big into the rituals at the show. Right. Which I got. I totally stole that from you. I was like, we gotta add some stuff to this show, man. There's gotta be.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: What were some of your rituals?
[00:03:11] Speaker C: So, for instance, I would meet the new people, right? So if someone was new, I would. And we would start off very pleasant. And then I would immediately start drilling into their personal lives and their business and why were they there, who were they with?
And it was just a whole, you know, just a very jocular affair in that respect. And I wouldn't say I recruited people. It's just organically, people who are into that kind of thing, who are into a show that's kind of wild, they tend to reveal themselves.
And so you get people who maybe start out as hecklers, but then they become something else. Right.
And so, for instance, with this poet that I'm talking about, Rick, I used to do these because his poems were so short. Like, they were shorter than the walk to the stage.
And so I would do these introductions that were extremely long. Like, I think my longest introduction for rick was, like, 10 minutes.
And I would tell you, you can only get away with stuff like that if you have kind of exerted a certain force onto the reading, onto the room, onto the audience, to kind of let them know, you know, this is a show. It's not just gonna be a poetry reading. It's gonna be an experience.
And I just always kind of kept Mark in the back of my head when I was doing that. Cause I'm like, he would always shut people down or he would give them the business. And so part of my thing coming out of that was I always. Not always, I guess, toward the end. So the last five, six, seven years of doing it, I. I just really felt like it was important for me to be on the side of the audience, not on the side of the poet.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:04:50] Speaker C: You know, to deflate any ego or anything that was coming out of that poet that wasn't a poem.
And so if they talked too much or they came up with an instrument or anything, I would just.
I would eat them up. I'd eat them alive, you know.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: So, yeah, that's great. You know, a lot of slams, we know, lost that, the control thing, and becomes A boring show.
Those early open mics you had, what was the reaction of those people when you started the new show that's got the more rigorous crowd control?
Did you have some fallout? Did so many people say, I'm not gonna participate in this thing?
[00:05:33] Speaker C: Oh, absolutely, yeah. And that's on me, Right? Like, I would want to do this show differently at different times. As I was learning things, as I thought we could grow into other types of things.
And I was for many years more concerned with trying to improve the quality of the poets. And I learned later on that that was a mistake.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: But how was that a mistake?
[00:06:02] Speaker C: Because that's not what people were coming to the show for.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: Okay. Or during the show, you were trying to have them do something different. Poe gets up and does something different.
[00:06:11] Speaker C: Not really. I mean, I always want them to be themselves. But at some point, I realized, and I think a lot of the time, maybe the entire time that I was doing slams and stuff like that, I was using that, I think, as a tool, obviously, to improve the poetry, right? Improve the performances, improve your writing, improve your reading, get out into the world, see some other poets, get out your bubble. All of that was a beautiful thing. But when we stopped doing the slam, because at some point I said, okay, we're not sending any more teams. I'm not sending any more poets to the national thing. It's just. It's changed too much.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Yeah, boy. It's interesting because that's the same place I went, right?
[00:06:52] Speaker C: And I'm sure we'll get into it.
But once I decided we weren't doing that, it became apparent to me that the people, the poets, the audience were coming for some other reason. It wasn't just about poetry, and it wasn't about me being funny.
It was something else. And I determined, and this is pretty basic, really. They just wanted to express themselves. They weren't trying to be better poets. They just wanted to get up and express themselves.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Beautiful.
[00:07:20] Speaker C: And so once I tapped into that, I was able to lean back and just emcee and turn the switch on, turn the switch off, go home, you know, without worrying about, should we have workshops and should we do this? And field trips, man. Let the people who care about that do that. I've been doing it at that point. I'd been doing it for, like, 19, 20 years. You know, let's just have fun. I'm going to have fun. You're not going to stress me out. I already did my time.
You know, Wednesday night is going to be a good time. I'll Let you express yourselves and we'll have fun and we'll just keep it there. And if somebody good comes through the door, awesome. I was still planning other events. I got this whole organization on the side, so I'm doing poetry shows, I'm doing showcases. I'm always being asked to bring poets to things that never stopped. And so I was definitely looking for good poets for that. And so that would become the incentive, right? Not open mic.
It's like eh, if you're good and you're working on it, let me know or I'll see it or let me see it and, and then maybe I got a gig for you or I got five gigs for you or whatever.
I got stuff for you to do if you want to do this, you know. Well.
And so that's where things are at.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Yeah, well that's interesting because I've learned too that the show, there's something for me, it's a spiritual thing that the people that come there just get connected in such a deep way and we don't have a serious competition anymore.
I think in the early years it was important to get the poets better performers because nobody was a good performer. So maybe it's an evolution that was important.
So you got your new style show going and you're doing the rituals and everything and that's in 98.
Then you came to the Mill. I met you at a Slam Masters meeting where our chaotic gathering where we tried for four hours, we tried to plan the whole year out, which was nuts, but it was fun. You came to the Mill, that's where I met you.
So pick it up from there. What was happening there?
[00:09:36] Speaker C: So we introduced Slam to our city pretty much not too long after we started like in 98, 99.
And the reading was different then. Like it was in a black owned venue and we had a black audience and it was very hyped. And that's a different vibe than a diverse venue and a diverse audience. You know, black people got expectations, you know, they need to be entertained and they don't really care if you're a good poet if you're entertained, you know.
And so we would just be constantly as poets we would be fighting that because we didn't know anything, you know, we weren't reading anything. None of us went to school for writing, nothing. You know, we were all just like computer programmers, librarians, teachers, and then we have some poems, you know, and that was fun, right? We wanted to do Love Jones. Right. We saw Love Jones in 96 and we were like, let's do that.
And so every black poet in America was doing Love Jones for a couple of years, including us. But then we just wanted it to be more. And so then we became aware of slam. I found Slam Nation, and that set me up. Oh, man, that set a fire under me.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: Yeah. The Slam Nation is the documentary that Paul Devlin did of the 1996. Or 5.
[00:10:49] Speaker C: 5 or 6.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: 5. Portland National Slam.
[00:10:52] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And that. I said, man, we. Whatever that is, we got to. We got to get into that.
And so there was no social media then. So I had to go on in line and look up stuff and, you know, get the documentary so I could re. Watch it, you know, and that kind of thing. And so then we created a Islam team. In 2000, we went to our first regional poetry slam, the Rust Belt Poetry Slam.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Rust Belt, yeah.
[00:11:21] Speaker C: Yeah, that was happening.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: I was running that.
[00:11:22] Speaker C: Bill Abbott.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: Bill Abbott, yeah.
[00:11:25] Speaker C: He was the slam master of Dayton, all right.
And he also created. As I recall, he created Southern Fried, but at that point, he wasn't running it, but he was doing the Rust Belt.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Rust Belt and Southern Fried were two regional slams. I tried to push the regional slam idea years before that, but. No, they didn't. Nobody wanted to do it.
[00:11:52] Speaker C: Nobody wants to miss the party.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: No. Nobody wanted to miss the National Slam. I wanted it to regionals to feed into a national event, and instead of having every team in the country come to the national event. But those regional slams kept on for a while. They were very good.
[00:12:11] Speaker C: Yes.
And they have returned to some extent. Right. So Southern Fried, I don't know if it ever stopped, except for the pandemic.
And then the Rust Belt is dusting itself off, so it's happening in some version, I think.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Oh, cool.
[00:12:26] Speaker C: And then I created an annual event, the Ohio Meat Grinder Poetry Slam.
You'll love that.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: When does that happen?
[00:12:37] Speaker C: Well, it varies. This year, it's gonna happen in the summer. But that's a slam that Louise Robertson and I, local poet, we created because I was tired of the National Slam. Yeah, right.
And again, I don't know when we'll get into it, if we'll. But the National Poetry Slam, as a. It had. It had gotten bloated.
We couldn't get it down. Once it hit five days, I was like, this is out of control. And then the. But the work that was coming to the National Poetry Slam, you know, by the time that I was nearing the end of my tenure, you know, this would have been in the 2000s, obviously.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: For the listening audience and for, you Hugh.
Hugh's not asking.
[00:13:16] Speaker C: I was working.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: I'm listening eleveled here, and I'm able to do it.
[00:13:22] Speaker C: Look at you.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: So, Hugh listening, But the National.
[00:13:27] Speaker C: Well, I was talking about basically how the work that was showing up at nationals had kind of flattened.
And at some point I decided I didn't want to send teams to raise these thousands of dollars, to travel these hundreds of miles, to do these months of work and rehearsal, to go to a five day event where they might read two poems.
I was like, that's a rip, man.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: Boy.
What I was thinking is that the listeners should understand that. Scott, when did you take on. You were the chairman of the president. You were president of Poetry Slam, Inc. Which was the national organization, and that started what, in 2005 or so?
[00:14:14] Speaker C: Give or take. Yeah. Like when you stepped down. There was one year when Taylor Molly was president. That was my fault because the votes on the executive council were split and I actually voted for Taylor, not myself.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:14:29] Speaker C: But then the next, he had to.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Deal with the crazy St. Louis National Slam, which was a disaster.
[00:14:36] Speaker C: It was.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: So for the listeners, the National Slam started out.
The first one was just eight teams.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: I think was that. It was four.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: It was only four teams. It could be. That's why we need to remember all this stuff. And then the next year, I think, was 12.
And that's when I introduced the idea of the regionals so it wouldn't get out of hand. But how many teams were coming on in your tenure as president?
[00:15:04] Speaker C: The highest number that we got to was like 80.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: Unbelievable.
[00:15:09] Speaker C: It was wild. I mean, and that's where you're saying.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: That 80 teams come to a city for a tournament. There's no way. You travel all the way and read two poems. Yeah, stupid.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
I mean, and I kept referring to it as a meat grinder. I was saying, this is a meat grinder, man. You send these. And then, because we would come home and the poets would be deflated, you know, they would be like, we did all that for, you know.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:39] Speaker C: And they, you know, they liked the cities that we went to and they enjoyed the side events and what. But it just wasn't.
The return on investment was not there artistically, creatively, emotionally. It just wasn't. And I couldn't in good faith keep throwing poets into something like that. Good for you.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: Now, what year was that? So give me an idea of how this.
[00:16:00] Speaker C: Oh, geez.
I guess I probably would have stopped sending teams around.
I'm gonna make up a number and we'll see. If it sticks, I'm gonna say probably around 2012, give or take.
I think I stopped sending teams, and then I stopped being president.
Like, I was president for almost 10 years, and I didn't lose an election. I just decided to stop running because no one really wanted that gig. Right. Who wants hundreds of poets yelling at you all year?
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Right?
[00:16:28] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: So Scott and Steve Marsh were the ones that were commanding and doing so much work, unlike other big nonprofits that, you know, because of me, we just didn't know how to get that big funding money. And it was grass shoestrings and grassroots to the very end the whole time. So it was just so much dedication by the organizers and that much appreciation from the poet level.
[00:16:58] Speaker C: Listen, I remember one year, I think it was Steve Marsh who put together a list, and he just put it out there for everybody to see. And. And he said, here's a list of all of the organizers of national events. And I forget how long the list was. Maybe like 20 people, give or take. And he's like, in this list are eight divorces, three separations, two deaths. You know, it was just like this numbing list, you know? And it's like, this is the toll.
This is the toll of that work. This work is real work.
It's not just reading poems. You know, somebody's got to carry all that water. And it is an enormous amount of water. It always was.
It never wasn't going to be.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: That begs the question then, so.
[00:17:45] Speaker C: Oh, so why grinders?
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Say, why are you doing it?
[00:17:47] Speaker C: Well, I love poetry.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Love poetry. Gotta be more than that. You gotta love the people, too, right?
[00:17:56] Speaker C: So for me, I just like to be so surprised. The minute you can no longer surprise me, I'm not interested.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: Beautiful.
[00:18:02] Speaker C: And so when slam, when I thought every year, okay, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna see a bunch of poems that are doing the same thing. Look, the same sound, the same talking.
I'm tapped out. I'm creatively tapped out. And it became very difficult for me to keep putting in all that work, knowing that the end product was not something I felt I could stand behind.
There was no surprise in it, you know, and when I came into slam in 2000, regionally and then nationally in 2001, there was surprise all over the place.
You know, poets were talking about everything. I was laughing in the middle of poetry, falling on the floor, laughing.
And that just. I mean, I'd have to go back and think about what year it was, but at some point, it just stopped doing that. For me. And I was like, hmm. And it was probably around the time that.
It was probably around the time that we Nationals was here.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:18:58] Speaker C: And we were doing finals at Navy Pier.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: Navy Pier, Yeah.
[00:19:01] Speaker C: And you were going to emcee it, and then you slipped it to me at the last minute, and I was like, I think I know what this is about. But, you know.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Was that Minnesota?
[00:19:12] Speaker C: No, that was. That was here.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: I remember. I remember.
Did you do it another time?
[00:19:18] Speaker C: I did. I did several times. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: That's one of the things I remember that I think it was Minnesota. We're at a big one. And it was a good one in Minnesota.
[00:19:27] Speaker C: It was.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: And everybody was itching, and I usually was the emcee, and everybody was itching to do it.
Mike Salinger. Sorry, Mike. You really wanted to do it.
And I wanted to get the humble people, the good servants, and that's. I gave it to Scott.
I didn't know I threw it on you at Navy Pier.
[00:19:53] Speaker C: No. Yeah. No.
Because that day, me and my teammate Kim Braswell, we had to go clothes shopping. Cause I didn't have anything. I had to go get some slacks, man. I couldn't be up on final stage just, like, in a T shirt, you know, I had to go get a shirt. Shirt, you know? So there's one picture of me and Mark on final stage where he's essentially like, here, you take the mic.
And I tell people, you should confirm this for the record. Finally, after all these years.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: Uh, oh, so too bad ISL isn't here.
[00:20:28] Speaker C: He wouldn't know. Only, you know the answer to this.
My impression at that time was, you know, the poets, the competitors at the National Slam, they had just kind of taken the rule book and caring about the rules and caring about making sure the bouts were doing certain things to equal everything.
And that started to seep into, okay, here's what we want the emcee to do.
And final stage is our biggest stage. And we, you know, and I felt like. And you have to tell me if this is true or not. And you can say no comment. That's always obviously allowed.
But my impression was that you were like, I'm not going to go up on Final stage and not do me. I'm Mark Smith. This is my city.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: Absolutely. And boy, you know, you hit on something that's.
It was a sore spot for me for a long time. Because it started.
First started in Ann Arbor.
[00:21:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: For the Ann Arbor National Slam, where somebody made some complaint about Gary Glasner was running a show.
I forget what the issue was but a gag on the mc that the emcee's job in my mind is to keep the show entertaining and moving and say outrageous things.
Say my style is I try to think of what the audience is feeling and I'll say a little line to make the audience feel. But then it became.
The competition became so serious that there became all these petty little rules that put the gag on the emcee.
I don't know if that night is. It probably was on my mind, but that thought had started way earlier.
I can't remember what was frustrating me that I would. I don't even remember switching it over.
I know in the last few years, I never took charge of the final night.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: You know, as I listen to both of you, when I hear you use the word national, it seems like there's a slight negative that goes along with that because something seems to have been lost on a grassroots level or on a more local level. Could you say a little bit about that? Because you were talking about all the rules that foment as you go to nationals.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I'll say a little bit and then I'd be interested to hear what Scott says. And I think we're such a same minds. But the national thing was a great event to start at. The spread it gave people in small towns or mid sized towns a reason to put together a team and someplace a goal to go learn the craft of performance poetry. And now this is a place to go. And at the beginning it was a wonderful thing. And you'd see all these different styles and, you know, the competition was still a bit of a lark, although some took it very seriously.
As it became more popular and performance poetry itself became more popular, the competition started to take on this serious aspect and the poets started writing to win.
And they'd copy other people's styles. They'd copy not only in the performance style, but they copied subject matter and styles of writing just to win.
And the ego slam started out a slap down. Slap. If you came to the show in Chicago, your ego got slapped down right away. Scott's plays too, as you said earlier, slapped that ego down. But at the nationals, it became the ego thing and not good. That's my take on it.
[00:24:36] Speaker C: No, that is the take. And anybody that would contest that just wants to have an argument that they're not gonna win. National. The National Poetry Slam. I want to say that specifically, you know, as an event, as a series of annual events.
I forget how many there have been. Those events changed poetry, the art Capital P. Poetry.
Poetry slam is. And I say this, and I'll say this to anyone anywhere, and I've been saying it for years, poetry slam is the most significant change in poetry in the last 30 years. End of discussion.
End of discussion. Poetry writ large has taken. Borrowed so many things from poetry slam. You don't have a moth without poetry slam. You don't have storytelling slams without poetry slam. Right. So now we're even talking about its influence beyond poetry, but within poetry.
So many poets who came through slam, you know, the thing that Mark describes, the ego, the way that wanting to win the competition changes the art, changes the poets.
That is. And that is so real. I had to stop sending teams because as someone who coached almost every team I sent to nationals, my first rule was, I'm not going to make you be a poet that you are not. We're just going to have to find the best version of you that we can take, and whatever happens, happens. So if the best version of you is a poet who, on the first night of competition, we've determined strategically to win this bar game, you're going to read a poem about Muppets having sex, and that's it. That's what's going down, man. Get up there and give it your best shot, kid. You know?
And that's what we did. That's all my teams did. And so. But then we would have to contend with this flattening, this flattened version of the art, this no surprise version of the art. And so that was a real thing. That's a real thing. And there's a lot of trauma associated with that. For those of us who remember what it was before that happened before. And what's interesting is, like, Mark was catching that way before I caught that, but before I was in the slam. Right.
Like, you can see it kind of Slam Nation a little bit, where he's kind of like, ugh, you know? And so that's the worst thing that could happen to it is that we take the competition seriously, you know, and that happened well before I got there. But I think probably the problem occurred when the rules were longer than one page. Right, right, right. The minute it was more than one page.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: And then also, slam poets in the mid-90s, they were getting. You know, they were. The slam was launching them into careers and everything.
So became a big.
A big deal, like the American Idol type thing.
This is gonna get me somewhere.
[00:27:47] Speaker C: The stakes change.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: Even though it only gets a few people somewhere, and what we created was about a lot of people. It wasn't about the winners.
Bob Holman's thing, the best poet doesn't win, you know, that got lost. Points are not the points. It's point is poetry that got lost and it became.
The poets would speak like, oh, yes, the points are not the point. No, they wanted to win. And they would compromise their personal style and their personal beliefs to write stuff just like a politician does to get a vote. They'll say stuff. And a poem that gets a 10 is like a politician's bullshit to get a vote. And that's what it sounds like. We both react.
[00:28:40] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, thanks for us.
[00:28:43] Speaker B: They hate us for it.
[00:28:44] Speaker C: Yeah. And, you know, and at this point, I think history has shown that not only were we right, but that they were so wrong.
There were Hugh. The stakes were so small for winning a slam. Like, to what end? You know, I mean, first of all, the prize money was very minimal.
Like, it did not cover the cost of going to the nationals for four or five people. Right.
But beyond that, beyond the prize and the bragging rights, which is really all that you had, which, again, I must emphasize is I don't care how big it got, was still a bar game.
Right. And I'm gonna keep driving that point because let me tell you what, they didn't want to change. Let me tell you what no poet really wanted to change about the slam. We always use random judges.
You don't know who the judges are gonna be that night. We pick them out of the audience or whoever shows up.
And the more ignorant they are of poetry, the better a judge we think they are.
That's the one thing that we held onto, I think, through the whole course of it.
So the minute that that's how you're determining the quote unquote winner of a quote unquote competition of a completely subjective art form.
You're not in a competition, man. That's not what it is. And they never wanted to do that. They didn't want us to go out and find four or five professors, four or five published poets. No. Four or five editors.
We could have done that, like, easy in any city that we went to. Right. Because the nationals rotated cities, you know, to keep things fair.
So they didn't want to do that, you know, so let's go back to.
[00:30:31] Speaker B: Let's get back to you.
[00:30:32] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: The great thing about the show from the beginning of the Green Mill, was that the show was like a. It took it to new places like Sin Salacha. We had on. Took her to creating the Loofah Method show, which was these multimedia things and everything.
Where did it push you to that? If it hadn't come along, you wouldn't be doing this type of thing.
[00:31:01] Speaker C: I frankly, I have to attribute almost everything that I'm doing at this point to. To my time in slam on one level or another, to some extent or another.
So, for instance, you know, running a non profit organization, you know, that has an emphasis on creating and preserving and refining Columbus culture.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: Okay, and what's the name of that?
[00:31:29] Speaker C: Streetlight Guild. Okay. And I created that in 2000 on paper. I created it in 2007.
And we got our building open in 2019.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: You have a building?
[00:31:42] Speaker C: Whole building.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: God, that's big.
[00:31:44] Speaker C: Whole building. Gotta clean the bathrooms and move the chairs and everything.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: Oh, man, that's a big success.
[00:31:51] Speaker C: That is huge.
And I will tell you, because it's a nonprofit, you know, when I was setting that up, naturally, all I could think about was poetry slam. How did we get it right? How did we get it wrong?
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:32:07] Speaker C: You know, when did we lose our way? How can I not repeat those mistakes?
And for the most part, our success, and we are great success, is owed to my decision to do the exact opposite of so much of what PSI did by the end.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: Yeah, PSI was of course, a non profit, which I never wanted to have.
I just did it in the early in the mid-90s to protect the name. And as soon as I didn't know what the hell I was doing with it. So it's good that you did everything opposite.
[00:32:46] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, and it's not any shade to you or how it began. Right. Like, that's not where I'm thinking. Cause I wasn't there for that.
I was there for the 2000s. And in the 2000s, I was like, wait a minute, let me get this straight.
We're gonna meet twice a year with 50 to 80 people and they're gonna get to vote on what we are, what six people are doing?
Nah, that's not gonna happen.
So we're gonna get rid of that. And then I'm like, so how big is this council?
Yeah, we're not doing that. Three people. That's it. That's all I need. Three people. And I'm one of them. So there it is.
And I was like, so what is the process for getting events to the table? Yeah, we're not doing that. We're not doing any of that.
And I was just very audience first. The minute an artist starts telling me what they want to do, I'm like.
[00:33:40] Speaker B: Yeah, and there's that's one of the principles that got lost. And it was a principle from the beginning that the audience is the most important, important part of. Not you, Mr.
[00:33:50] Speaker C: Poet.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: Because if you let the poets tell you what to do, it's pretty self serving.
What kind of stuff does the Street Light Guild. Yeah, yeah. What does it do?
[00:34:00] Speaker C: So we do all kind. Anything that kind of falls under the rubric of culture I'm interested in. So that's literature, that's art. Right. That's ideas.
So we do.
I have a gallery where we do art exhibits.
I only want the artists to give me stuff that they can't do other places. Right, Cool. So there's a slam tenant in there somewhere. Right.
I do lots of poetry things. Most notably I do an event called Rhapsody and Refrain. It's an annual event originally when I started it.
Now, five years ago, or I shouldn't say five years ago, there were a couple times when we couldn't do it during the pandemic. That is basically a daily series of events that runs for a month.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: Oh, cool.
[00:34:45] Speaker C: Right. 30 days.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:34:49] Speaker C: And that was one poet per day, no days off for the whole month of September every year. And so I would pick the poets, I would pay the poets, and the audience would show up for the poets.
And that's it.
That's the show. And we did that for several years. Now I got smart though, because I'm not as young as I used to be and I'm at all of these shows.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:35:14] Speaker C: So I'm like, there's gotta be a smarter way to do this. And so what I did last year was I put two poets per night and we do it in two weeks. It's the same number of poets, the same amount of poetry, the same cost, but it takes less time and that makes it much easier for me. And then this year I moved it to April. So next month, two or three months. Yeah, yeah, I gotta get back.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: And it's called what?
[00:35:37] Speaker C: Rhapsody and Refrain.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: Rhapsody and Refrain. So if we get this podcast out in time, which we might not, it's April.
[00:35:46] Speaker C: That's okay, because I got more poetry coming, so poetry is the easiest thing to do for me.
You give me a building.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: This thing makes me think of with him. The way you describe that Scott has a thing of his own that's not the same, but similar. He has his. He does this 24 hour.
You don't still do that? No, no. How many years?
[00:36:09] Speaker C: I did it for eight years.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: Eight years at the Nationals. Right. Or where?
[00:36:13] Speaker C: Oh, no, no, no. So at Nationals, one year in Seattle.
That's where it started.
Somebody was running a 24 hour open mic, like the whole event in the back of a diner in Seattle. This is my first year national, so that had great impact on me.
[00:36:31] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:36:31] Speaker C: I was like, this is just what we doing.
This is amazing. And then, like, of course, there would be all this time where there were only, like two poets in the room.
So then this kid, Jared Paul would have to be doing, like, hours of poems because they were actually trying to make sure that the time stayed filled. Amazing. I mean, I took that away and I was like, that's something.
And so then I would do these solo features. I did those for eight years in Columbus.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: In Columbus, 24 hours, just me, poem after poem. Not repeating a poem at all?
[00:37:02] Speaker C: Not in any year, no.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: How many poems does that work out to be?
[00:37:06] Speaker C: It was about.
I think, if I remember the number, it was roughly about 2,000 and something poems, in all fairness. Like, you know, one of them was like a large section of the Inferno.
So. But yeah, I did that for eight years. And then I figured there was nothing else for me to prove or to learn.
And so the minute that. Again, if there's no surprise, that wasn't.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: Just your work, it was class.
[00:37:35] Speaker C: Good Lord. No. No.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: Which is great. Which is something that kind of got lost in the seriousness of the competition, because the competition always had original stuff. But shows, regular slam shows, always encouraged you to bring anybody's poem to beat.
[00:37:51] Speaker C: Yeah. It's so funny because, like, when I was describing you and what you created to someone today, I was telling her how.
I said, yeah, the poetry slam is a fascinating thing. I said, you know, I think we messed. I know we messed it up. Like, whatever Mark created, we eventually messed it up. I said, but because like, if somewhere in Oak Park, Illinois, in Henry Sampson's living room, there's a VHS tape of.
I believe it is the first or second national Poetry Slam.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:38:30] Speaker C: And it's, of course, very raw, very rough cut.
You're up there emceeing the show. There's a poet. A poet. And then like the next scene is like three people with TVs on their heads dancing.
[00:38:42] Speaker B: Oh, that was.
That was Sin Silach, who we mentioned earlier. Henry Sampson was part of the Chicago team. And also he was involved with PSI at the time.
[00:38:57] Speaker C: Many years.
[00:38:57] Speaker B: Many years. Henry Sampson from Oak Park, Illinois, he was part of the team that put the shows on in Chicago. But that was since the latch with the tv. I'm pretty sure I was like, what.
[00:39:09] Speaker C: Am I Looking at right now. He just pulled it out like it was nothing. He knew right where the tape was.
I'm like, you need to be showing this at the National Poetry Slam so people understand what they have messed up. We could be doing this right now, and they've blown it.
So that's what I was talking about. So when I was talking about the Meat Grinder slam that I made up, we do once a year in Columbus.
So it's the only slam that I can sit through now because.
Not because I created it, I actually. Once I set the date, I have very little to do with it except paying for it.
But it's essentially a regional. Poets and teams come from various parts of the region.
We cap it at, like, 10 teams.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:39:52] Speaker C: It all happens in one day, in one venue. We remove all the rules except for the time limit.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: Cool. So they can have costumes, props.
[00:40:02] Speaker C: Man, when I tell you someone.
Someone had.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: When is this gonna happen?
[00:40:08] Speaker C: Oh, what's the date? I think it's in August this year.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: Oh, I've got to do this.
[00:40:13] Speaker C: You gotta check this out.
I will tell you, but it's. Somebody grilled a grilled cheese sandwich during a poem. Somebody tattooed themselves during a poem. Someone got their hair cut during. Oh, God, whatever. I mean, they're very creative. And I'm like, this is the epitome of surprise. I don't know what. I don't know if they know what they're gonna do.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: Well, let's have a. Let's have a couple poems.
[00:40:37] Speaker C: Oh, God. You know, I don't memorize anything.
[00:40:40] Speaker B: Yeah, you don't have to, because we're. There's no video.
[00:40:45] Speaker C: But. Oh, wait, I can do this. And, like, I put a book out in November, and if I had brought it with me, this wouldn't have been a problem. See, that's what I get.
[00:40:54] Speaker B: The title was that. What's the title?
[00:40:57] Speaker C: Black Knight is Falling.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: Black Knight is Falling.
Everybody out there listening. World go by. Black Night is Falling by Scott Woods.
[00:41:06] Speaker C: All right, let's do this one.
Let's do this one. This poem is entitled don't say Friend.
Don't say friend when you mean lover or co worker. Don't say friend when you mean associate.
Don't say friend when you mean acquaintance.
Ex lover when you mean date. Don't say friend when you mean what I mean when I say friend, which comes with choreography and moment and stolen glance.
Don't say friend when you mean aunt. I am no longer talking to.
Don't say friend when you are all. Yes, sir and no ma' am when you mean I am your free therapist don't say friend or when you mean safety net when you mean convenience when you mean secret don't say friend when the slow jam take breaks and the mixtape breaks and the playlist gets unchanged when you weren't looking don't say friend when you mean trying him on checking the fit don't say friend when you mean keep creep at bay don't say friend when you mean keep at arm's length don't say friend when you bad at it don't say friend when you transactional with it don't say friend driving down one way streets don't say friend when you vicarious with it when you mean avatar when you mean don't know where to put this heart so put it here in this when you mean Please don't hurt me when you mean sucker when you mean mark when you mean winter is coming cuffing season when you mean customer when you mean acolyte when you mean sycophant when you mean bridge I haven't burnt yet don't say friend when you mean don't know what else to call you now when you mean have you heard our Lord and savior Jesus Christ?
When you mean how much do you pay on your electric bill these days?
Don't say friend when you mean client don't say friend when you mean atmosphere when you mean I'll pay you Tuesday when you mean Come on brother when you mean didn't mean to turn you on when you mean Let me get away with this.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: Do another one. Find another one. Okay, friend.
Hey friend. But find another don't say friend when you want another poll.
[00:43:41] Speaker C: Let's see, what. Where's that one? I'll do the short one. Shortish one.
This is one of those things that I'm always getting on poets about at open mics where I say when they're searching through the phone. Through the phone? Yeah, like what's with the phone?
All right, here we go. We'll do this one.
This is a short one.
It's a love poem called Afternoon Collards.
She put greens in my clothes and my mouth Stripping their stalks with a veined grip A lover's broken buttons dropping into a running sink A baptism of hands and garden musk. Hope you said your prayers, collards. I promise you they will be answered.
Sitting at a kitchen table altar she put greens in my clothes and my belly I will never wash this hoodie again.
Stoked in a seasoned kitchen that remembers Simmered in a dented vat unto like bed. She puts their leaves to rest in their own swallow cracking pepper with her hips. She put greens in my muscles and my tongue a lash of vinegar puckering my lips. Her hip where a ham bone should be A pot licker of kisses.
Nice.
[00:45:01] Speaker B: Sweet. Sweet.
Well, okay, so we survived without Mark Eleveld, the usual host of through the Mill. And we had a great time with Scott woods, who was the author of Black Knight Is Falling. That's his latest book. But he was also the leader of Poetry Slam, Inc. The national organization, host of the Columbus Slam, and now curator or the boss of Streetlight Guild. He was with us today. And what great fun. And thanks to Hugh, producer, and Tony, our sound engineer, who's right over there behind the candles.
And thanks for listening to through the Mill. My name is Mark Smith.
[00:45:46] Speaker D: So what you've been listening to through the Mill, our podcast about the poetry slam. My name is Mark Eleveld. I'm the editor of this spoken word Revolution Books. Emily Calvo is here with us. She named the podcast. It's an anthology she's been working on since the early 90s. And we're here with Mark Kelly Smith, the founder of Poetry Slam. We're going to be bringing some podcasts and shows to you to hear the origin stories from a bunch of different poets and a bunch of different organizers. Our director, Hugh's over there in the corner. I hope you had a good time and we'll talk to you soon.
[00:46:21] Speaker B: Down. I'm not ready.
[00:46:22] Speaker C: Do another one.
