The WAT?! Tour’s 9th year promises to be its biggest yet. The week-long poetry marathon kicks off Sunday, August 10th and runs through Saturday, August 16th.

It’s poetry for 7 nights straight in 7 venues. It’s a lineup that consists of 19 of Houston’s top poets and a select, nightly feature that promises to bring diversity and excitement that defines what it means to be a performing poet in Houston. Participating poets range in styles from academic, slam, spoken word and experimental.

As always the show is free and open to the public nightly at 8pm sharp every night of the tour.

THE 2024 VENUES

SUNDAY, AUGUST 10TH BOHEMEO’S ART HOUSE 708 TELEPHONE RD., HOU. TX, 77023

MONDAY, AUGUST 11TH INPRINT! 1520 WEST MAIN, HOU. TX, 77006

TUESDAY, AUGUST 12TH WILLOW ST. PUMP STATION 811 N. SAN JACINTO, HOU., TX 77002

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13TH AVANT GARDEN 411 WESTHEIMER HOU., TX 77006

THURSDAY, AUGUST 14TH BOOMTOWN HEIGHTS 242 W. 19TH ST. HOU. TX, 77008

FRIDAY, AUGUST 15TH THE ALLEY KAT BAR & LOUNGE 3718 MAIN ST., HOU. TX, 77002

SATURDAY, AUGUST 16TH BRASIL 2604 DUNLAVY ST. HOU. TX, 77006

THE 2024 LINE- UP

This line up represents the full spectrum of Houston poetry- poets garnering attention from local, national and international publications, along with prize winning slam poets; poets working on MFAs and PHDs amongst performers, hosts and producers of theatre, blogs, live shows and internet radio. They are professors, students, activists, jazz musicians, and graduates from the school of hard knocks from all over the Houston area.

*ALICE ALSUP | SAVANNAH BLUE | BGK | GERALD CEDILLO | PW COVINGTON

WINSTON DERDEN | DIGH | ERANIA EBRON | MARLON LIZAMA | SAL MACIAS

JONATHAN MOODY | BISHOP RAGTIME | OSCAR PEÑA

RAIN | AMIR SAFI | TRADEMARK | MARY WEMPLE

THE 2024 VETERAN FEATURES

These poets have performed with the tour for at least 3 years, and have earned a short feature at a venue during one night of the tour. They are Hip-Hop Artists, Lyricists, Teachers, Arts Organizers and Visionaries. They help build poetry in Houston

ARIA | STEPHEN GROS | LUPE MENDEZ | THEFLUENTONE | CHRIS WISE

*NOTE: In Memoriam – Sadly, Alice Alsup passed away soon after being selected for a slot on the Poetry Tour. The organizers ask the participants and the audience to honor her memory by holding a moment of silence every night of the tour. No one new was selected to replace Alice on the WAT Tour – out of respect and love for the poet.

About one week ago, the local poet, journalist, and University of Houston student Alice Alsup wrote a Facebook post soliciting favorite lines from suicide notes. As a fellow poet, journalist, and lover of words, I thought nothing of it–maybe she was working on a story for Houstonia, where she interned, or maybe she just had some kind of goth predilection.  I contributed some lines from one of my favorites, Mayakovsky’s Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy. I think Alice, herself, recommended something from Sylvia Plath, but I could be mistaken. Alice’s Facebook profile no longer exists.  As of Monday, June 9, neither does Alice.

She was a sprightly being, a read-headed butterfly fluttering about on her bicycle from a vintage shop to a picnic in the park, from a friend’s club gig to the next poetry reading…to places beyond and places between.  Her lucent, gossamer complexion betrayed a radiance within–she did not seem of this world, in truth. A faerie. A nymph. A sprite.  Her voice–a little squeaky, a little unsure–and her charm–she seemed at ease with being ill at ease, disarmed any unease as another stranger became Alice’s new friend.

At Summer Fest this year, Alice said hello to me then immediately struck up a conversation with my companion, placed a Texas sticker on her chest so as to leave a negative tan “tattoo” in the shape of the Lone Star State, thus giving her a fun distraction from the heat. Our mutual friend Make was about to perform.  She supported her friends, and her friends, likewise, remain some of her biggest fans.  (Look for Alsup’s article about Make, aka Josiah Gabriel, in the July edition of FPH–we wish she were here to see it.  And look for Alsup’s poetry in the upcoming Word Around Town poetry festival.)

Yesterday, a motley crew of about 50 tattooed, pierced, dreadlocked people gathered in Menil Park to mourn and celebrate Alice. The diversity, in every sense of the word, among her friends bore witness to the breadth of her explorations–young, old, black, white, hispanic, man, woman, trans, rich, poor, crusty, preppy–all came out to wring their hands, lament their loss, curse her act, share tears and laughter.

I did not know Alice well, though I had hoped to get to know her better.  I first met her at a dance party I helped organize on Valentine’s Day.  My collective, Nomadic Beats, threw a renegade street party on the median in Montrose in conjunction with Art League Houston. We dropped some funky beats and handed out 200 red carnations to motorists stuck in traffic.  Alice appeared to have loved it, and her presence added much to the atmosphere.

Back at Menil Park, Kira, whose shoulder bears a tattoo line drawing of Vonnegut’s face with the caption “So it goes,” Mary, and I read this passage from Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, the Bokononist death rite, and talked about savoring every moment of our time in this form:

God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!”
“See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.”
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
I will go to heaven now.
I can hardly wait…
To find out for certain what my wampeter was…
And who was in my karass…
And all the good things our karass did for you.
Amen.

Some folks at the park felt angry about Alsup’s “selfish” act; others wiped tears from their eyes and shrugged their shoulders and said she had every right, that the life was hers to live or refuse; some spoke of mental illness; some said our lives are not ours alone, that we belong to others in addition to ourselves.  I was reminded of my high school guidance counselor’s adage that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

I hear tell of at least three suicides in the Houston arts scene just this week, all under very different circumstances. I’m not really sure what else to say about that. Love your friends, I guess, and look for those signs.

According to one friend at the memorial, Alice had been posting photographs on Facebook that dropped subtle hints about the way she would eventually choose to go.  According to another friend, on a recent visit to the prison museum in Hunstsville (which she wrote about for Houstonia) she seemed particularly captivated by condemned prisoners’ last words.  And then there was the Facebook exchange I mentioned.  Taken together, these observations begin to paint a picture, but taken independently, how could any one of us have known?

So what is there to say?  It’s just sad, really really sad.  A tragic loss.  Our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Alice Alsup.  If only she knew the number of people she inspired.

Let’s let Alice have the last word.  Ronald Jones’s videos do an excellent job of capturing her spirit. I can’t believe she’s gone.

Read love it’s last rites.
Say to yourself
“This is my heart letting go.”

I should always be prepared to be in transience, you know, ready to move on at any time. Even now, I love where I ‘m living now, but I have every cardboard box that I’ll ever need stuffed in the hallway closet just in case I need to move again. And I have left two boxes unpacked.

All photos courtesy of an anonymous friend of Alice’s.

Feel free to use the comment space to leave stories of Alice and thoughts for her loved ones.

Last week, the Poetry Society of America’s national series, Red, White, & Blue: Poets on Politics, landed in Houston.  Local literary non-profits Inprint and Nuestra Palabra teamed up with PSA to bring Sandra Cisneros, Tony Hoagland, and Alice Quinn to UH for a free, public reading and discussion.  (Poet Benjamin Saenz from El Paso was also scheduled to read, but he could not make it.)

I promoted the event with the following lines:

You know what the politicians say (what their focus groups tell them you want to hear), you know what the pundits say (whatever will get them more ratings), and you know what the comics say (whatever will get them a cheap laugh)–now come hear the poets.

The poets all read the works of others (more on that in a bit), but the most interesting part for me was the Q&A that followed, particularly when Cisneros said, “Poets are the opposite of politicians.  Politicians tell us what we want to hear, whereas poets tell the truth” and Hoagland added, “Poetry teaches us irony.  Politicians are not allowed to be ironic or ambivalent…or to change their minds.”

Of course, poetry deals with timeless themes, whereas “politics” are of the moment.  There is a tendency in the common discourse of the US to think of “politics” as only having to do with party politics and elections, Democrats vs Republicans, conservative vs liberal. As an artist, myself, I can understand why artists want to stay away from subjects that are so base and temporal.

If we expand our definition of “political” to any study of power dynamics among and between groups of people, then I daresay all expression becomes political. Politics becomes impossible to avoid–if not in subject matter than in the choices the artist makes regarding tradition, their medium, how they define their audience and their relationship with that audience. These considerations are impossible to avoid.

“Speaking at all,” said Cisneros, “is a political act.”

The website for the whole national series features poems and interviews with some of the participants which are worth checking out (including local poet/translator Fady Joudah).  This is Hoagland’s response to a question about the examination of the political in poetry:

It is central to me. As I became an adult, outgrew my anguish of adolescence and came further into knowledge of the world, I recognized that…things like money race, nationality, history, to name a few, were forces that infiltrated everything.

Douglas Kearny’s answer to the same question included this:

I think poetry is well-equipped to deal with examining questions about the desire for power, grappling with the dangers of that desire, the ways we deal with those we consider of lesser, greater and equal power as ourselves. There are of course, as Tracy K. Smith once said, things a vote can do that a poem cannot and vice versa. Things a petition can do, a bill can do. But in my experience as a writer and reader, poetry is excellent for examining will and want. These seem to me engines of the political.

I posit, then, that despite any artist’s desire to be “apolitical,” all art is political.  Some months ago, an artist described her work as “apolitical” to me.  I asked her more about it and she described it as “jewelry…pretty things…nothing political.”  I asked her where she sold it, how much she priced it at, what kind of language she used to sell it, and looked at photos she had on her phone.

“So you make pretty things for rich people,” I finally said.  “Is that not political?”

Of course, there are different levels of nuance and complexity–of overtness and subtlety–layers of subtext and multiplicities of meaning–across an artist’s oeuvre and within a single piece, even.  After reading Kenneth Patchen’s “The Orange Bears,” about the terror experienced by a ten year-old boy who witnesses the National Guard brutally busting a steel workers’ strike which included the poet’s father and his father’s friends, Hoagland explained that poetry adds meaning and depth to emotions we may not initially understand.

“Poetry teaches us how to feel,” he said.  “A poem can guide you through the architecture of an emotion.  At the end of it, you are larger.”

“Poems should be on the backs of cereal boxes,” said Cisneros, “in bags of Cheetos.”

As I said earlier, the poets all read the work of others rather than reading their own work, which was an interesting choice.  Listening and working to understand the perspectives of others–even those with whom you might disagree–is a political act.  That polyphony, and the readers’ implicit humility, was refreshing.

I contrast last Monday’s event with the typical poetry slam–perhaps the most overtly political contemporary poetic movement.  The typical slam poem goes something like, “I…I, I…I, I, I…I, I, I.”  The “I” is so self-indulgent, so self-involved, so solipsistic, that it can hardly be subversive.

Rather than getting into the identity politics that ended the night and the dismissive attitude of the otherwise charming and compelling poet, Tony Hoagland, I will leave you with this brilliant parody of your typical political slam poem, from one of the best in the form, Taylor Mali, called “How to Write a Political Poem”:

(I am not above dishing the dirt in the comments section, though.)

OK wait–two more plugs.  First, listen to this recording of Tracie Morris reading her “Slave Sho to Video aka Black but Beautiful”–a tremendously powerful poem consisting of about seven words, repeated and chopped and screwed and remixed to explode syntax and explore the very construction of meaning.  Second, take every opportunity that presents itself to immerse yourself in the work of local poet, John Pluecker, who does something similar to Morris in his critique of slam-style poetry with his poem consisting of the five words “this is a poem about,” repeated with different pauses and intonations to create questions and declarations and exhortations.  (Look for one of Pluecker’s performances in ongoing collaboration with Lucas Gorham for an especially humbling yet simultaneously inspiring experience.)

Photos courtesy of Dave Einsel.

Buddy Wakefeld does things with microphones that will blow your mind

By Alex Wukman

One of the truisms of Houston is that no one wants to do anything during the summer. From May until about September the arts community seems to go into a coma—few big shows and even fewer big gambles come brave the heat and come to town. Conversely, the fall seems jammed packed with events. So many events happen in October and December that it’s inevitable some get overlooked. Sadly, some of the events that get overlooked also involve art forms that have been reduced to second class citizens. Maybe it’s the disproportionate amount of musicians in Montrose, or maybe it’s because people don’t really care, but it’s rare that someone talks about an upcoming performance art piece, gallery show or poetry reading.

It’s a shame because gallery shows are great places to meet people with lots of money who are willing to buy your art, performance art pieces usually have free booze and poetry readings always lead to fascinating conversation. And two upcoming readings in particular should produce great conversation. On November 19 Houston will play host to the Bayou City Poetry Grand Slam, an event that is being billed as “the first major poetry slam in Houston.” The Bayou City Poetry Grand Slam is bringing over 20 nationally known and ranked slam poets to town to compete for a first place cash prize of $1,000, a second place prize of $500 and a third place prize of $250.

While $1,000 may not seem like a lot in most jobs, for poets struggling to eek out a life on their art $1,000 can be the difference between making rent and picking up shifts at Outback. While the money is nice, it’s not the most important part of the Bayou City Grand Poetry Slam—that would be the headliners.  Savannah Blue Productions, an up-and-coming event production company started by Houston slam team member Savannah Blue, was able to convince two-time World Poetry Slam Champion Buddy Wakefield and National and World Slam Champion Joaquin Zihuatanejo to come to Houston. Not only have Wakefield and Zihuatanejo both featured on HBO’s Def Jam Poetry but they both have competed at the international level.

Despite the energy and intensity of watching two of the best slammers in the world at the top of their game—some people will, inevitably, poo-poo the event. They’ll think that poetry shouldn’t be competitive. They might even say that having that many poets on stage for such short amounts of time, 3 minutes each, makes it hard to follow what they are saying.  Those who want a more focused approach to staged poetry are in luck, on November 23 Invisible Lines, a brand-spanking new performance troupe, will offer a dramatic interpretation of Up Against You a 2024 collection from long-time member of the Houston poetry community Debra Matthes.

When it was released by Fools Court Press Up Against You garnered some attention in the local poetry community, Professor Randall Watson over at the University of Houston—another longtime resident of the Houston poetry scene—gave the book a nice cover blurb and Matthes did a few featured readings around the city. The Invisible Lines press release describes their interpretation of the work as following Matthes’ “turbulent mythos of desire and disappearance as she recoils from sexual trauma, wanders through a world of pain and confusion,” before finally landing in “respite and renewal.”

Invisible Lines is composed of faces familiar to anyone who frequents the Notsuoh’s open mic night, Bucky Rea, Tracy Lyall and Salvador Macias form the core group. For Up Against You the three core members will be joined by Savannah Blue who will serve as a special guest reader, and three troupe associates: Megan Copestake, Kira Jazz and Rachel Rogers.

Bayou City Grand Poetry Slam

Saturday, November 19, 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. at MECA, 1900 Kane St., Tickets are free for more information and to register for the event click here or call 832-396-9547.

Up Against You

Wednesday, November 23rd, 8pm at AvantGarden , 411 Westheimer. For tickets or more information visit InvisibleLines’ website or call at 832-651-2561.

By Alex Wukman

Months after the debacle that ended Catal Huyuk’s poetry slam word reached Malcolm’s ears that Perry Farrell, of Jane’s Addiction and Porno for Pyros fame, would be including poetry on the 1994 Lollapalooza tour and that Houston would be hosting a qualifying slam at, what was then called Mary Jane’s, a venue now known as Pearl Bar.

 When the night of the slam arrived Mary Jane’s played host to dozens of poets as well as Farrell himself and Marc Smith, the Chicagoan who developed the concept of a Poetry Slam. As local musician, poet and playwright Clyde Richardson described in a 2024 interview, “Malcolm won the slam hands down. He performed a poem about a serial killer that Perry Farrell bought for $5,000 on the spot, but he turned down the tour.” Richardson explains that Malcolm’s decision was based on the fact that he didn’t want to spend three months on tour performing in places like Clarkston, Michigan or Bonner Springs, Kansas. “He told Farrell ‘I’ll meet you in Seattle.’ Since I came in second I got to go on tour with Lollapalooza,” Richardson said as he flipped through the Lollapalooza 1994 poetry anthology to his piece about birth control. In 2024 Malcolm stated that Farrell did option the poem but explained that it was a 10 year option and the rights reverted back to him in 2024.  

Malcolm’s statement about meeting the tour in Seattle was a little odd, since the tour didn’t actually have a Seattle date scheduled that year. The closest Lollapalooza came was performing in Surrey, British Columbia—120 miles north. The only dates scheduled in the US portion of the Pacific Northwest were August 31 and September 1 in the small, western Washington town of George, Washington. However, at the time Malcolm’s mistake was understandable, after all Nirvana were scheduled to headline the tour that year. And Malcolm was rumored to have a special affinity for the kings of grunge.

Various accounts over the years have indicated that Malcolm may have had a crush on Kurt Cobain. It is even speculated, by those who speculate about Malcolm, that he met the man who would go on to be described as the voice of Generation X in 1991 when Nirvana played Houston’s home for heavy music—The Vatican.     

A year after declining to go on a fully-funded-tour of the US, and parts of Canada, Malcolm set out on a much more low-budget-two-week-tour of the East Coast with nine other Houston artists, including Jim Pirtle, later of Notsuoh’s notoriety, Kevin Jackson, who had played in Grindin Teeth and was known as an experimental musician, but who would later go on to help found Houston’s best known pirate radio station Radio Free Montrose, and Nestor Topchy, one of the creators of Zocalo and its predecessor TemplO.

Christened the Zocalo Mobile Village, the tour featured a 1971 school bus, recently purchased from the Texas Department of Corrections, which had been painted pink and yellow and modified to accommodate a 25-foot by seven-foot stage on its roof; Topchy also included multiple gasoline generators to provide an onboard power supply for the myriad of electronics, theatre lights and public address systems that were shoehorned underneath the seats.

In Brad Tyre’s memorable article Got on the Bus he recounts how, despite the heavy modifications, the bus was far from roadworthy. He describes how once the bus left the Zocalo compound, two acres on Feagen Street that Topchy leased for $400 a month from Harris County DA Johnny B. Holmes Jr., and pulled on to Washington Avenue “it was realized—too late and yet awfully early—that the turn signals were inoperative and the brakes were questionable,” two statements that, when taken within the context of building a 25 foot stage on top of the bus, epitomize artists’ priorities.

There were also issues with the personalities selected to go, not the least of which was Malcolm. Tyre writes that, even before the bus had left Houston, Malcolm insisted “on challenging every personality characteristic of every member of the entourage, just to see if he [could] make them cry.” The performances are almost impossible to describe, simply recounting how Pirtle sang a karaoke version of “If You Go Away,” Rod McKuen’s English translation of “Ne me quitte pas” by legendary Belgian singer/songwrite Jacques Brel, while Topchy, dressed in pajamas and white face paint, climbed a knotted rope tied to a 30 foot aluminum tripod doesn’t do the participants justice.

Stating that by the end of the song Topchy had reached the top of the tripod, where his mugging face was captured by a video camera and the signal was then looped into a projector and broadcast onto a screen behind Pirtle, who was writhing around beneath a stilt walker is superficial. It ignores the fact that simply linking up a camera and a projector in 1995 was a feat in and of itself; it also ignores that in 1995 a video projector was a very high-dollar item. The cost of the projector leads to questions about how a group, described at the time as a bunch of “starving artists,” were able to afford something that retailed in the tens-of- thousands-of-dollars range.

Glossing over Pirtle’s use of condiments in the performance, mayonnaise as face paint and drinking salsa during the show, without discussing why he used them to induce vomiting ignores Pirtle’s personal history as the child of neglectful parents and how he would induce vomiting to garner their attention and affection.  Simply stating that, at the end of the show the audience was invited onto the bus; and once there they were served coffee while Malcolm, accompanied by an acoustic guitar, read them poems dismisses the sardonic beauty of inherent in Malcolm’s piece “Jesus comes to the Ft. Worth mall.”

To paraphrase the humorist Martin Mull, writing about art is like dancing about architecture; it fails to capture the essential essence of what happened. Simply describing the performances doesn’t represent the trials and tribulations of life on the road, one example that Pirtle and Malcolm shared in the summer of 2024 was how the bus’ brakes went out in DC. Over drinks and in between fits of laughter Malcolm and Pirtle remembered how Topchy had to drive the entire 64-miles of the I-495 Beltway to lose enough speed to exit and Tyre was, understandably, afraid for his life. Recounting 16-year-old performances without including what the audience experience and what they thought about that experience does a disservice to both artist and audience.

Tyre’s attempted to do so in his article, when he wrote that the group received mixed reactions; ranging from New York art establishment types calling it utter shit to art students thinking it was the greatest thing they’d ever seen. However, those are just the documented reactions. There is a rumor, spread by Malcolm, that at the end of the tour first-term New York City Mayor Rudy Guilliani gave the group the Key to the City. Strangely no one else has ever come forward to substantiate that story.

The lack of any form of substantiation makes something like receiving the key to New York City easy to dismiss, but other claims, by their very nature, are harder to dismiss because they are harder to substantiate. It’s easy enough to prove that no one on the tour died, but it’s not so easy to prove what Malcolm did or happened upon in the months following the tour.

To be continued…

Next: Turn of the Millenium and beyond