This weekend, two of my sisters and one of my brothers-in-law came from California to visit me and on Saturday. We spent the day in Sedona.
Though Sedona is, in itself, probably one of the most artistically and culturally rich places I’ve ever been to, the main reason I went was for the monthly Sedona poetry slam that takes place at Studio Live.
I had a few friends competing in the slam, and my boyfriend, Jeremiah Blue, just so happened to be the feature poet.
One of the friends competing was Joy Young who, if you can remember, I mentioned in one of my previous posts about the Women of the World Poetry Slam qualifier where Joy came in second to Rowie Shebala for the spot as Phoenix’s representative at this international event. (If you’d like to know more about the competition, poetry slams or the Phoenix representative, Rowie, see my second post, All the Pretty Poets.)
The small one on stage is Joy Young, delivering her first poem of the night. Photo by Alexandria ConradBecause Joy was hoping to still compete at WOWPS, she went to Sedona on Saturday with the hopes of winning that city’s representative spot. Well, guess what. She did, and not only did she just beat the other women poets, she came in a close second place. She also — probably most importantly — won 25 whole dollars that will, I’m sure, go toward her WOWPS travel fund . . . or toward celebratory drinks to be enjoyed at the after party, thrown traditionally every month by the host of the slam, Christopher Fox Graham. Either way, the money will be well spent.
Now when your boyfriend is the feature poet at an event that your family attends, especially after only having met your family for the first time briefly that morning, you’d expect to him to maybe keep the sex poems at about level zero, right?
After the second round of the slam, feature poet Jeremiah Blue performed. Photo by Alexandria ConradOk, so maybe he did one sex poem (co-written with a friend before he met me, just for the record), but it was so well delivered — and partially in the accent of a Southern Baptist preacher — that I don’t think there was a single person in the room who didn’t enjoy it. As was the case with the rest of his performance.
But in all seriousness, Jeremiah entertained the audience with a good mixture of humorous, romantic and serious poetry, with some aptly light-hearted commentary in between. He did fantastically well, if I do say so myself. (There’s no bias there, right?)
Jeremiah, Joy, and Rowie are all frequent competitors and attendees at the weekly Phoenix poetry slam held on Thursdays at 8:00 PM at Lawn Gnome Publishing, so if you’d like to meet them, support them or just creepily observe them from afar, that is a great place to do it.
If you’d like to reach me with comments, concerns or suggestions, you can email me at anconrad13@gmail.com or tweet me at @alliectersely
