1/365
NOTE: Big thanks to BB for reminding me via text message to post the other night. My phone died and I got your message past midnight. I do appreciate your effort though… My restarts are getting stupid.
TRYING TO GET A COUNT
It seems the more I travel and tour around North America, the more poets I run into who are also on tour. I have been very curious lately just how many poets are making at least 51% of their living as a poet. Be it through workshops, traveling tour, merch sales. What I want to know is how many poets’s income is generated under the umbrella of poetry.
I know I won’t get a very accurate account, but this is a start. If I’m gonna keep pushing this thing for me and thise who want it, I want to know who I am working with. The more I know, the more I can do. It’s one thing if there’s just 25 of us trying this, but it’s so much better if there are 100.
Marc Marcel and I did a mental count of people we assumed were working poets and the number surprised us, but that was relegated to just those who tend tour for a bulk of their income. It’s was an inspiring number and much larger than either of us had expected.
I’d also like to see some estimates from poets in the scene before 2000 who may have an idea as to what the numbers were in the 80s and 90s. This will help me see growth or drop-off. I feel there is growth though.
In 1998, I asked a featured poet at the San Jose Poetry Slam what it was like to make a living as a poet, getting to travel and pay bills with poetry. They immediately chuckled and said that wasn’t possible — and this was someone who knew the score. I was saddened and thought, “well, at least I found a sweet hobby.”
While I feel lot of people might label my solo shows as “comedy with poetry strewn in” (which is what it looks like to me) I am way more honored to call myself a poet or a “guy who talks on stage” than a stand-up comedian. I am far more comfortable in a spoken word environment/scene/movement than I have ever been in a comedy club/comedian’s circle. In my experience, the rate of human’s practicing off-stage douchebaggery in the comedy world is much higher than in spoken word scenes.
That is still surprising to me. Poets are either kinder or way shadier…
Either way: I want to see more people on the road. Quality poets. If you suck, get better, then hit the road. The more good performers claming to be spoken word artists and writers there are out there traveling and sharing their work, the more likely we are to have audiences who choose a night of us over must-see-TV or just sittig around the house.
Pick up that pen and write, godammit! Memorize your shit! Show it to people you don’t know. Find venues. Create venues. Support others doing all of the above. Hit the road. Be prepared to be lonely and confused and know that, for the most part, because you claim poet/spoken word artist, you’ve got a family-network out here that is extraordinary and all-too generous. There is support throughout the world unlike anything I can describe and it’s just a matter of seeking it out.
I just really want to expose this awesomeness and show people who are sitting on their asses that this is possible, hard, but possible. In my 7 years of solid touring, I have seen so much growth and no sign of slowing. I feel like the interest in competitions like poetry slams has waned a bit, but spoken word events outside the scope of poetry slam are growing with speed and ease. There are plenty of venues out there for those who want to be in them either as a performer or an attendee.
So who’s out there making a living at this? It doesn’t matter how much of a living it is. I just want to know how many people make a majority of their living through poetry.
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Word to the nerd.
This entry was written by , posted on 14 March, 2010 at 9:19 AM, filed under Uncategorized and tagged professional poets, touring poets, working poets. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.