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In honor of their daughter Caroline, whose longstanding presence and participation in Penn's spoken-word community helped inspire a resurgence of oral poetry on campus, Steven and Nancy Rothstein (CW'75) established a fund to support an annual oral poetry program at the Writers House. Each year we host a program or project featuring oral poetry in one of its many forms: spoken-word, slam, or sound poetry, to name only a few possibilities.
The second annual Caroline Rothstein Oral Poetry event featured a tour through one of the most explosive art movements of the 21st Century: the New york City Poetry Slam. Author/slam poet (and Philly-native) Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz led a presentation about the birth, growing pains and continuing development of this raucous poetry event, which has been called "a pop culture phenomenon" (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times), "the death of Art" (Harold Bloom, Paris Review) and has been blamed for making "poetry sexy again in a way it hasn't been since the heyday of the Beats" (Stephen Holden, The New York Times).
Four New York City Slam poets -- Shappy Seasholtz, Edward Garcia, Nicole Homer and Chad Anderson -- illustrated Cristin's talk by showcasing the variety of work found in the slam, including comedic pieces, political pieces and electrifying group work.
The first annual Caroline Rothstein Oral Poetry Event, featured Taylor Mali. Click here to listen to an mp3 recording of the entire event. Click here to listen to a 15-minute Writers House podcast about this event.
Taylor Mali (who was born on March 28, 1965) is a teacher and poet. Generally considered to be the most successful poetry slam strategist of all time, having led six of his seven national poetry slam teams to the finals stage and winning the championship itself a record four times before anyone had even tied him at three, Mali was one of the original poets to appear on the HBO original series "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry." He was also the "golden-tongued, Armani clad villain" of Paul Devlin's 1997 documentary film "SlamNation," which chronicled the National Poetry Slam Championship of 1996, the year of Mali's first national team championship.
Formerly president of Poetry Slam Incorporated, the non-profit organization that oversees all poetry slams in North America, Taylor Mali makes his living entirely as a spoken-word and voiceover artist these days, traveling around the country performing and teaching workshops as well as doing commercial voiceover work. He has narrated several books on tape, including The Great Fire (for which he won the Golden Earphones Award for children's narration) and is also the author of several books and cds of original poetry and spoken word.
