Boston

So now that I have finished with Albuquerque i can tell you about what I was doing in Boston last weekend. The story actually begins about four years ago in the summer of 2001. Jeannie and I had been dating about two months when she was invited to attend the first ever APIA poets summit in Seattle to be held the week before the National Poetry Slam. I was going to attend NPS so I went along with her so we could have some time together before the Slam competition. The summit was created to help support the asian American Slam poets that were competing that year. There were about 150 poets, writers and community groups that attended that summit, and at the planning meeting it was decided that the summit would happen every other year. The Next one in 2003 was held in Chicago, I did not attend. This year however it was held in Boston. Now you may say that is a long ways away from the Albuquerque NPS. Well it was decided that the summit does not need to be tied with the NPS city because the goals of the summit shifted to be more inclusive of the poets that are not competing in slam. It is now about the community, the youth and about growing the community of APIA writers. Jeannie was again going as a representative of the workshop and many other people were going to be there whom I have not seen in a very long time so I decided to tag along with her as well as support the poets I knew.
With just a few exceptions it was a virtual who's who of the Asian American spoken word scene. F Omar Telan, Beau Sia, Kelly Tsai, Jiles Li, Dennis Kim, Reggie Cabico, Michelle from Yellow Rage, Bushra, Bao Phi, Robert Karimi ( Half Guatemalan, oh Yeah!), Ed Bok Lee, Mesej 1, and a whole host of others. The performances were fantastic as each of the performers knew they were reading for people who would get their poems more than the average poetry crowd. There were several workshops, several readings and several "family" events. It was a great thing to witness. It is great that the community of poets is so together that they can actually pull off a summit in that way. I had a lot of fun, especially at the dance in the restaurant. What a fun group of people. The next one is in New Orleans in 2007. I hope that the city recovers by then.