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Carlos was the feature at the Nickel City Poetry Slam Finals in Buffalo, NY this month; as well as performing the next night at the Town Hall in New York City with acclaimed performer Savion Glover. Carlos is a poet's poet, a true artist whose main interest is to take real risk in both his writing and performance in an effort to reach the heart of himself and his audience. With credentials too numerous to mention, check his webpage or his myspace for more information. Here's the story from the Buffalo News: Carlos Andres Gomez headlines Buffalo Poetry Slam Championship BY ANDREW Z. GALARNEAU - NEWS STAFF REPORTER Carlos Andres Gomez headlines the Buffalo Poetry Slam Championship tonight in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. To craft the powerfully raw yet breathtakingly intimate poems that made him a poetry slam star, Carlos Andres Gomez didn’t have to go far for inspiration. The 25-year-old spoken word artist and playwright spent time working as a social worker and high school teacher in some of New York City’s toughest neighborhoods. He worked as a substance-abuse counselor, an HIV educator and an outreach worker. His clients were in crack houses, shooting galleries and prisons. There, Gomez struggled to find words to reach them and convince them to seek help — testing, housing or treatment. Tonight, Gomez will headline the Buffalo Poetry Slam Championship in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. “All those people I worked with — people in very challenging circumstances, desperate circumstances — had a raw authenticity that would cut through everything else,” Gomez said. When he sat down to write, it “marked my work,” he said. He’s looking to project a “genuine, clear voice that cuts through,” he said. “Even if you don’t like poetry, don’t have an ear trained to listen to it, even if you don’t comprehend intellectually all the things I am saying, in your heart and your spirit you can apprehend all of it, feel it and sense it, and understand it emotionally,” he said. The voice that cuts through has propelled Gomez onto the national stage, with appearances on HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam” and a film role in Spike Lee’s “Inside Man.” Recently, Gomez started performing his first one-man play, “Man Up,” which revolves around the idea of what it means to be a “good man.” He’s also preparing to travel to Rwanda and Sudan in August, to work on a play called “A World Without Fathers.” Another project, a documentary film with director Lisa Russell, will feature Gomez traveling through Africa with young poets from New York City, working with them to confront their biases about Africa. Today, he warns young would-be poets not to write poetry to chase the dream that poetry will make them famous or rich. “I always tell people that if you write, you’re writing for the most selfish reasons — not for fame, because that is an illusion. Do it to keep yourself sane. Do it for yourself. To keep yourself connected to your world, happy, clear.” The success of “Def Poetry” has “given exposure and permission to a lot of people to explore and to find poetry,” Gomez said. But it has had negative effects, too. He still believes everyone can be a poet, Gomez said. “But where the bar is set, for what is demanded of the art form, is very low, and it needs to be raised,” Gomez said. “People need to be more challenged and more varied in how they express their voice.” “[Some poets are] pandering now, because they want to get on ‘Def Poetry’ or want to get on whatever,” Gomez said. “I say, respecting an audience is not about what the audience wants to hear, it’s what they need to hear. Miles Davis would turn his back on an audience that had come to hear him. [Thelonious] Monk would walk circles around his stool and hit one note — that was his solo. You have to challenge an audience.” Local poets competing tonight on the Albright-Knox stage for spots on this year’s Nickel City Poetry Slam team will include Nikki Germany, Jennifer Elinge, Marina Blitshteyn, Lazyrus, MC Vendetta, 10,000, Sonchild and Lovely.•
After founding the site in 2000 as a school project while studying Digital Video Production, LivePoets.com has been a way for me to catalog the best in the national poetry slam community. It's been a pleasure to serve this community in this regard, and I greatly appreciate the support of all the regular users of the site. I look forward to continuing this relationship.. but it's going to take a different focus in the months to come. After a lengthy relationship with Poetry Slam Incorporated, the national non-profit which is responsible for hosting all official National Poetry Slam events, the company is moving in a direction with their footage that does not allow for free distribution. Their works are terrific multi-camera productions, and continue to be for sale, and are the largest collection in the nation at this time. As a result, I have had to remove the footage I used to host here out of respect for our long relationship. At the moment, I am on a short "Video Safari" in the Northeast, touring some of the top slam venues in the nation and capturing footage of the current players in the game to add to the LivePoets brand. Over the next few months, you can expect to see lots and LOTS of updates -- new poets, MANY new clips, and some new features of the site. Please keep coming back for more! Livepoets is please to once again work toward becoming your premiere site for freely streamed new slam poetry! Best regards, Gabrielle Bouliane Founder, Livepoets.com multimediagrl@hotmail.com
Thanks to the skills of Christopher Holmok, we are pleased to present you with an entirely new version of livepoets.com. This new design, in addition to being far more stable, should prove even simpler to navigate to find the spoken word artists you love. To become a part of the site, please check the "about" page. Content will be re-built as time permits -- if your favorite pieces are missing, or there's something you'd really like to see, please let me know at multimediagrl@hotmail.com for fastest response. Enjoy! Gabrielle Bouliane Founder