Friday's Stammer was a blast, in spite of starting a little late because I'd forgotten the PA head and had to race back to the house to get it. Students from a Broughton High School Creative Writing class were among the performers, both in the feature section and in the open mic after our second set; Host Mz Julee and Stammer regulars Langston Fuze and Dasan Ahanu read and performed spoken word pieces; Scott Carey played guitar, effects, and tape loop; Kirk Adam of Glitter Films showed three films, including a hilariously deadpan analysis of the postmodern Graffiti Removal Movement. I took some pics, but the lighting was horrible for the poor little camera in my Palm Pilot. They're all here, anyway, including a fuzzy shot of the Salamanders playing at intermission. Neither bassist David Penny nor flautist Lauren Robbins-Pollack are in that pic, so I added pictures of them in my living room.
It's an entirely different world than the Lucifer Poetics Group tour or the Desert City reading I attended with my wife. Perhaps because there's always an open mic, perhaps because the Stammer at ArtSpace (it travels every other month) is in downtown Raleigh near Shaw University, there's a lot of emphasis on performance and on message: Stammer poets typically have something to say that they damn sure want you to know about and remember. It's not quite slamming, but there's a lot of hiphop rhythm and a lot of rhyme. E. V. Noechel and Durham's Tanya Olson are the only ones I know to swim in both ponds.
10:04:57 PM 
|
|
