Slab City Slam podcast

The featured poet at the 2006 Slab City Slam was Christa Bell. To explain further, we will need the words of the poet herself: "FonkGoddess is alive and Coochie Magic is afoot through the revivalist poetry of internationally acclaimed poet, SpokenWord artist and cultural activist Christa Bell of Seattle, Washington. Her conundrum: How to make the Goddess fonky. How to make the resurrection of women’s spiritual consciousness sexy while maintaining its urgency and emphasizing its relevance to popular culture. The solution: Sanctifying women’s experience on the altar of the stage. Taking responsibility for her conceptual reality out of the hands of men through performance ritual, emphasizing the Word, that reconnects woman to her primal identity as sexual mystic, conjurer, healing artist, and divine visionary." Christa received her BA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, has studied in France and lived in East Africa. She is currently the third ranked Performance Poet in the United States and, having lost the competition to a time penalty, after receiving the highest score in the individual event. Christa is Seattle’s 2005 Grand Slam Poetry Champion and the Northwest’s 2005 representative at the Individual World Poetry Slam Competition (IWPS). As founder of the Healing Is A Political Act (HIAPA) Creative Recovery Workshop Series, Christa is concerned with more than the technical aspects of writing and performing. She believes that expressing individual creativity is a form of power. A way to actively engage and transform our spiritual, emotional, social and political realities. Her workshops hold as their emphasis the healing of ancestral, emotional, and spiritual scars as a path to higher creativity. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Revival (2004), Arise My Beautiful One, Come With Me (2005), and YoniVerse (to be released 2006), the producer of a live Spoken Word EP entitled, WordMedicine, 2006, and is currently recording a full length live LP of her first SpokenWord tour also entitled YoniVerse: Live. For more info about Christa Bell and her work, click on http://www.christabellonline.com/ For more info about Coyote Radio, click on http://www.coyoteradio.org/

The young Gabrielle Bowers writes passionate pieces about identity, love hardships and growth. This very descriptive poet paints vivid pictures in the mind of her audiences. Indulged in many of the fine arts Gabi aims to improve on her crafts as time goes on. Nurtured in Maricopa County's west valley just budding into adult hood, this 19 year old wordsmith has inspired minds double her age. A definite old soul reincarnated.

I was on the Counter Culture team. I've been reading poetry at various open mics for the last three and a half years, and have read at Arcosanti the last two years. In the later half of 2005 I started to get become more focused on slam-specific poetry, and have been tailoring my poems to fit the specifications required by slam. I'm 25 years old, and attending ASU for a Creative Writing degree. My writing is very much influenced by Raymond Carver. Words on the poem: I wrote this based on a former bar in Phoenix called the Emerald Lounge. Once on my way to California, I stopped in early in the morning to have a drink and relax before heading out, and I noticed I wasn't the only one there. So this piece is for the opener's and closer's of the bar. Of the lonely grace we stumble through the days with. Creative Commons License Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 You are free: • to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work • to make derivative works • to make commercial use of the work Under the following conditions: Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor. Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one. • For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. • Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. For more information about the Slab City Slam or other poetry doings in Northern Arizona, click on http://www.norazpoets.org/

Roanna Shaundini Shebala, of Flagstaff also known as Rowie Shebala, born on the Navajo Reservation, Ft. Defiance AZ. She has a family, which finds their way in a lot of her poetry. She has a brother Lamont, and two sisters, Kendra and Tanya. She is the oldest out of these so in a lot of ways she has the role modal thing down. Her parent are Lamentino and Kenita Shebala. If you ask her questions about herself she is willing to tell you what needs to be known, a very shy girl, who graduated from Window Rock High School, and now Northern Arizona University with a degree in Theater studies. She has been writing her poetry ever since she could remember, from the roses are red violets are blue poems to slam poetry. A girl who has played video games since she was small, from the original Nintendo to the Super Nintendo, and then to Xbox. When she’s not playing video games she usually trapped in a metaphor. Rowie Shebala is brought up in the traditional setting of the Navajo culture. She cares a lot about her family and her poetry, the two elements in her life that keeps her sane. Rowie Shebala first started to slam in January 2005 and by April, was a finalist at the 2005 NORAZ Poetry Grand Slam, and also became a finalist for the 2006 Grand Slam. What is interesting is that her first slam she ever witnessed was the 2004 NORAZ Poetry Grand Slam and was a judge, so that year the poets with whom she now slams with might have boo’ed her. After that, she was a judge at a number of the slams in Flagstaff. After a while, her brother had basically pushed her onstage, and encouraged her that she had talent and it belonged on a Poetry Slam Stage. Her first time on the mic with her poetry was during the November 2004 Presidential elections when she wrote a poem telling everyone to vote. She is a short Navajo girl, just looking to be heard. This is Rowie Shebala, a little shy, but always a sweet little short Navajo woman. Creative Commons License Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 You are free: • to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work • to make derivative works • to make commercial use of the work Under the following conditions: Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor. Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one. • For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. • Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

There's no better way to kick off our coverage of the 2006 Slab City Slam Spoken Word Festival than Christopher Lane's poetic call to arms. The slam competition starts off with a poet working the cold audience, bringing them into a headspace open to poetic thought and performance. This poet will receive no points, advance no further in the state of national competition from this performance, but holy cow, if they've got game the rest of the night is going to rock. Such was the case this year when NorAZ Pooh-bah Christopher Lane stepped to the mic and let 'er rip. In a space of less than 4 minutes, Christopher made us laugh, pissed all over jingoism of all stripes and made the case for the poet as life-saving force of nature. And that was just the start for one amazing night of slam poetry in rural Arizona.