Slam poets bring diverse art to campus

Monday, November 16, 2009 - 8:39 PM

Poet Derrick Brown seemed to hypnotize the 150-plus people in the Joe Crowley Student Union theater Tuesday night.

Slam poets Buddy Wakefield, Anis Mojsani and Mike McGee perform a comedic poem and send audience members into hysterical laughter. Local poets perform their work every third Wednesday at Se7en Tea House in downtown Reno. Photo by Nick Coltrain/Nevada Sagebrush.

He had the room chortling only minutes before; but now, even the backbeat was silent.

Brown, a member of spoken word group Elephant Engine High Dive Revival, then spun his words around the audience’s guts and pulled.

“Mom, if we weren’t blood, I’d marry you and never leave,” he said. The phrase was the linchpin of his poem about his absentee father and his mother losing her wedding ring while doing dishes.

The poem, despite being in the latter half of a show that began with an a cappella rendition of DMX’s “Party Up (Up in Here)” and a pitch for it to replace the national anthem, wasn’t out of place.

It was just another piece of a show that bounced between concert and comedy, touching and light-hearted.

“It is my favorite event of the year,” said Ricky De La Rosa, concerts chair for Flipside and organizer of the event.

Reno local Tony “Talik” Walker opened the event. He won the spot at a slam poetry competition at Cantina del Lobo earlier in the month. Walker also hosts a spoken word group every third Wednesday at the Se7en on West in the West Street Market.

But the main attraction was the Revival. Made up of Buddy Wakefield, Anis Mojgani, Mike McGee and Brown, the group dazzled the audience with its range. Mojgani’s first solo poem had him starry-eyed and recalling childhood wonderment. Later, he donned a hotdog costume to play the group’s former poetry professor.

McGee spent the show as a crack-up, the highlight of his performance being what he called “gourmet eroticism” – that is, an ode to pudding. (“I like you like Muppets like fisting,” he said during the performance.)

Aside from the solo acts, the group showed off its musical capabilities with a pink plastic ukulele, a makeshift drum and what looked like a tabletop version of pedal steel guitar. They never broke into outright instrumentals and the songs never lost focus on the lyrics, but it gave the audience a beat to suck everybody in.

The event’s diversity never hurt the focus or drew away from the poetry and lyrics. Instead, it served to make the artists’ words more poignant and to make poetry – with its baggage of beatniks and more negative stereotypes — stick out in the audience members’ minds making the event one should look forward to next year.