Poetry Slam Pioneer Graces Stage at NHS Benefit

By John Voket

The music industry has its Eric Clapton, the culinary field has its Emeril Lagasse, but when it comes to poetry, the Poetry Slam has Patricia Smith. Newtown High School students participating in last Friday’s Poetry Slam Extravaganza got to reach out and touch this poetry pioneer following a 20-minute surprise set.

Ms Smith showed up to support the high school’s third annual slam, a name derived from open mic poetry readings in Chicago that took on theatrical trappings as expressive talents not only read, but acted out the emotions that helped birth their individual works. The NHS event was held to help raise funds for the school’s 2005 literary magazine, according to teacher and event coordinator Cari Strand.

“We’re also recording all the performances for a CD which will become an audio bonus with the literary magazine,” she said during intermission of the March 4 event.

As the lights went down for the second half of the show, MC Lee Keyloch introduced Ms Smith.

The demure poet, dressed neatly in an earthy jacket and slacks, spent the next few minutes introducing the audience to members of her family in a combination of anecdotes, and then in alternating soothing and rapid-fire verses.

Attendees learned about her father, and how his love for a particularly prepared style of corn bread provided her life lessons that she espouses to this day. She performed an entertaining, almost musical piece dedicated to jazz great Dizzy Gillespie, and a touching verse about her now 30-something son.

“There’s this magic moment between [ages] 10 and 11,” she recalled. “At one point your little boy has to be by his mother’s side every second, then suddenly they won’t even look at you. Once my son hit that stage he wouldn’t even walk in the same aisle with me when I went to the grocery store.

“Then about ten years later they start coming around to do laundry and you become friends again,” she concluded.

According to a biography published in the Bedford Introduction to Literature, Ms Smith was born in Chicago, Ill., in 1955. She got her first exposure to performance poetry while covering Chicago’s Neutral Turf Poetry Festival for The Chicago Sun-Times.

She quickly gained fame in the poetry slam circuit while continuing her work as a journalist. In 1991 she accepted a job with The Boston Globe and brought the Chicago style of slam poetry with her to New England.

In 1998 she was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism, but the nomination was quickly withdrawn after it was proven that some of her stories for The Globe had been fabricated.

Ms Smith has published three books of poetry, Life According to Motown (1991), Big Towns, Big Talk (1992), which won the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, and Closer to Death (1993).

Ms Smith is also a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, and has performed her work around the world. For a few minutes one cold Friday night in March, however, she revealed a few influential slices of her life to 100 instant fans at NHS.