Thanks to everyone for keeping up with these interviews. It's been so much fun so far and I am so excited to continue with these interviews through December of this year. It's been a very exciting couple of months. Every week, I get to chat with two awesome poets and every week you get to read what they have to say about poetry and life. Catch up on the last few interviews here!
This week I sat down and talked to two poets across the country: Elizabeth 'Elizag' Gordon, New York poet and activist, and Jomar Valentin, Austin poet and semifinalist at the National Poetry Slam this past August. Here's what they had to say about their venues, favorite meals, and biggest concerns for the future.
Q: When did you start performing poetry?
Elizabeth 'Elizag' Gordon: First official feature was when I was 20, in West Philly. I found slam in 2011. It was love at first sound.
Jomar Valentin: I started slamming in 2009 at Austin Neo Soul. That was also my first NPS.
Q: If you could get one message across in your poetry, what would that message be?
Elizabeth 'Elizag' Gordon: We’re so connected any love we feel is healing, and any love we act on is revolutionary, but love without justice is just sentimentality. Maybe that’s three messages but linked…beets in a bunch.
Jomar Valentin: Use shade sparingly and only when you have a point, and then make that point and do it unapologetically.
Q: Can you tell us about your home venue?
Elizabeth 'Elizag' Gordon: Albany, New York’s Nitty Gritty Slam is an amazing change-loving place. Right now the new co-slam masters are broadening the audience with more improv, musical features, games and just a wonderful high energy good show for the people. Embrasure going on big time. We meet at The Low Beat in downtown Albany 1st and 3rd Tuesdays. I invite everyone.
Jomar Valentin: Austin Poetry Slam's shows are housed in the Spiderhouse Ballroom. It has a capacity of 225 people that we hit almost every week. As a Slam Master, I am very proud of it. We are on every Tuesday at 8pm, and every Sunday at 4:30. There's a fountain outside of a naked baby peeing into a bathtub. You can hit 3 Pokéstops from the venue. The house signature is called a "Cowboy Killer" which is a shot of Jim Beam and a pint of Lonestar for $5.
Q: What is the coolest thing poetry has allowed you to be a part of?
Elizabeth 'Elizag' Gordon:The lineage of poets, “The stairway stretching back to the first handmade fires, poets crying ‘stars are sparks someone’s caught,’ and forward to the last fires of our dying sun, that lover whose leaving we will not survive.” Even if I’m just in the basement looking up, to be one among the poets who have tried to craft from language a deeper better being – that’s mad cool.
In there here and now I’d have to say my first bout at WOWPS 2014, in Austin. The energy, the poets, the enthusiasm of the packed house, the hosting, the DJ – everything came together to coast us out into new realms of I don’t know what to call it but I’m so glad I was there. It was the kind of night made glad I made it through a suicidal time or two with my heartbeat in-f*cking-tact. Lotta dancing after. People wanted to stay in the space.
Jomar Valentin: Slam has allowed me to combine two Austin performance art scenes by bringing the drag community into slam venues. At WOWPS Austin, Tova Charles and I worked together to bring local drag queens into WOWPS evening events. I've also brought drag performances onto the Austin Poetry Slam stage. As APS Slam Master, and as someone who once moonlit as a drag queen to pay his cable bill, both scenes have been very good to me, and I am so happy to be able to bring them together.
Q: Part of being a great writer is reading. What are you reading these days?
Elizabeth 'Elizag' Gordon: I’m not great and I’ve been binge watching (Stranger Things, The Night Of) – a summer staycation I guess. I’m also reading right now Mouthful of Forevers by Clementine von Radics, No Death, No Fear by Thich Nhat Hanh (in an open-randomly sort of way) and Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib’s The Crown Ain't Worth Much is on the way. Eagerly awaited. [Interviewer's Note: Hanif will be featured in this series later this fall.]
Jomar Valentin: Pantone: The 20th Century in Color. Outside of poetry and slam, I have a day job as an interior designer. I like to keep all my edges sharp.
Q: What is your biggest concern for the future?
Elizabeth 'Elizag' Gordon: Personally, will I ever go to the dentist and get this cracked molar pulled, and (related) is my affordable care here to stay? Nationally, how and when will we end once and for all the racist violence against black bodies, the brutal and inventive undermining of Black lives? Globally, will the so-called developed world wake fully the f*ck up and live in a way that slows global warming enough so people and the net of systems we rely on can survive.
Jomar Valentin: Burning out. In every sense.
Q: What is your ideal meal?
Elizabeth 'Elizag' Gordon: Rice, steamed veggies, dahl.
Jomar Valentin: Fried Chicken. And whiskey.
Q: What is on the horizon for the near future?
Elizabeth 'Elizag' Gordon: I made the IWPS draw as a storm. Woohoo. So Flagstaff AZ in October. I’m sort of coaching someone who’s going too so double woohoos. Beyond that, I’d like to tour soon. I did a short one this past June and loved it, especially getting to hear so many different voices and how each place seems to create its own sound, have its own preoccupations. And it’s a major thrill to bring the noise to a room full of young poets and sell every book and CD you brought with the help of some angel who gives you a square when you can’t find yours because why are they so small. Lansing Michigan and The Drunken Retort I’m looking at you.
Oh and there’s the 12-year-old boy pushing out in a very adolescent my-turn-now sort of way. I need to get clear on that. So much is possible now that wasn’t before. Is it ever too late break free of the binary? Is it ever possible to break free fully? I learn a lot and get more grounded every time I hear young poets. Just last night a former student of mine, Ainsley Pinkowitz, blew my mind with a poem about her masculinity. I told her she made more space for me to write in. To live in. On the horizon? More and more gratitude. Fiercer responsibility. Truer witness.
Jomar Valentin: I'm in my first year as APS' Slam Master. We have so many exciting things at we're planning including big plans for our new Sunday Show, and I'm working on a manuscript for a full-length poetry collection that I'm calling "Apocalipsync."
Q: Anything else? (Comments, links, poems, etc)
Elizabeth 'Elizag' Gordon: Thanks for this, good questions, you do good for poetry! Check out my website and Facebook. Love to hear from anyone via my email. My first full collection Love Cohoes is available on the website & on Amazon.
Jomar Valentin: Austin Poetry Slam is on every Tuesday at 8pm, and Sunday and 4:30pm! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter! Check out our poems on our YouTube Channel! You can watch my poems here, here and here!
