Weekly poetry slam at CBGB’s Gallery

By Jin Moon

2/18/2000

In the dingy, brick-walled basement of CB’s Gallery, a part of the famous punk venue, CBGB, a mixed crowd of New Yorkers drink their Coronas and smoke their Camel Lights, chatting with their companions in anticipation for the upcoming show.

One East Villager grips his venti Starbucks coffee as the cherry of his cigarette glows orange in the dim lighting. The white apparel of everyone present illuminated an iridescent purple under the black lights. Hipsters with thick black framed eyeglasses focus intently on the stage. It isn’t punk music they’re waiting to hear. It’s poetry. It’s the rebirth of Urbana.

A featured DJ spins a lyrical hip-hop beat as the audience bobs their heads to the tunes of De La Soul and Black Sheep.

Urbana is a poetry reading series originally started in November 1998 by three former New York University student poets and one current NYU senior just after they attended a poetry fest in Austin, TX.

The poetry venue features weekly slam competitions in which poets perform or read their poetry on a mike in front of an audience. It is a chance for poets to make their writings crawl off of the crumbled paper and into the hungry ear of the audience. It is a chance for writers to test out the poetic subway scribbles in front of a live audience. But the rule at Urbana is no booing, maximum cheering. It is in this environment that the city’s ultimate spoken word artists gather to shape words with their voice and seduce the audience into a poet’s mind, if only for a few minutes. Poets with the most wins each year move on to slam in national competitions representing the venue.

“All we could talk about was our dream reading series,” says one of the co-founders of Urbana and NYU graduate, Amanda Nazzario, 21. “We had no idea that we could actually do it.”

Other principal founders of the reading series are NYU senior Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, 21, and NYU alumni Patrick Anderson, 22, and Beau Sia, 23. In last year’s line-up, Urbana also featured other accomplished spoken word artists who graduated from NYU like Maggie Estep and Saul Williams, who stars in the 1998 movie, Slam. The series had a weekly slot on Sundays in the cement basement of the Gene Frankel Theater in the East Village. Now, the series has upgraded to the basement of CB’s Gallery, and many loyal slam-goers believe the move is for the better.

Aptowicz, a short-haired brunette poet with spunk and spark, says, “We wanted a place where we felt like our voices could be respected. The National Poetry Slam, Inc. knew that we had a different audience than the other two major poetry series in New York City, the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe and Bar 13.”

“It was mostly our own spirit and enthusiasm that carried Urbana through,” says Nazzario, a waify blonde-haired who presently walks dogs for a living. Her poems range from “weak-in-the-knee” themes to electrified charges of “screw-you-I-will-survive” slams.

After the charmingly energetic Urbana shut down at the end of last summer, former NYU student and Urbana poet, Morris Kurzman, 22, a.k.a. Morris Stegosaurus, says that he missed the free-spirited reading series and wanted to bring it back from its hiatus. Others involved in the grand re-opening are Frank Rempe, a tall, dark and handsome model and poet, and regular Urbana spoken word artist Lisa King.

Kurzman, a sprite and innovative poet who is unafraid to venture into bizarre and unconventional themes, says, “We wanted the return of Urbana to dovetail with our own series.”

Today, the series is coordinated by more of its regulars, including charismatic and sarcastic in-house poet Taylor Mali, 34, who teaches at The Browning School in Manhattan and Yolanda Wilkinson, a 26-year-old actress and spoken word artist whose poems resonate attitude and wit.

“I want to make sure that however successful the season is, we are also looking toward putting together a very strong team to go to the nationals,” said Mali.

The series is often seen as a place for experimentation, where newbie poets can practice slamming in the open mike. Wilkinson says she started slamming because someone dared her to perform at Urbana’s open mike. She accepted the dare, and by the end of the season, she was a member of the 1999 Manhattan slam team.

Wilkinson often uses modern, concrete subject matter such as the ever-so-daunting invention of the answering machine. Like most Urbana poets, her poems often leave both a feeling of laughter and inspiration. She said, “Urbana encourages variety whether you have a certain type of cadence, subject matter or attitude.”

Aptowicz agreed. She said, “We’re the goofy kid brother of poetry slams. We respect poetry, but we respect the art of entertainment as well.”

Other Urbana coordinators also believe that their slam night is distinct from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and Bar 13. “Of the three slam venues in New York, Urbana is the most humorous and the least political because of the poets who founded it,” said Mali.

“I think because we’re new and less intimidating, it’s easier to try a new poem here,” said Kurzman.

Featured poet this and last year, Sarah Jones, 26, the Grand Slam winner in 1997 and writer and performer of a one-woman show called “Surface Transit,” said that she found a “really high energy level at Urbana, even compared to Bar 13.”

Sia, who often rips up the stage with fierce energy, said, “Urbana allows me to experiment.” Sia also spends a lot of time performing on the college circuit. “I get to sing more and learn how I perform when I am drunk. I learn how I perform when I’m high. I learn how I perform when I’m sad,” he said.

He also added, “Over the years, I’ve become less reliant on commas and conjunctions and more reliant on metaphors and similes so that my poems have a melody, rather than a rant.”

Sage Francis, a member of the Providence, R.I. slam team and Urbana DJ, said, “I won’t slam at Urbana because I’m on the Providence team, but I like being the sorbet poet in between rounds. I like to spin music and to perform and not have to worry about anything.” Thanks to Francis, the audience will be moving their bodies to the rhythm of various hip-hop artists, prepping for the upbeat ambience of the basement.

For the first two weeks of Urbana’s revival, professional underwear model Frank Rempe, 29, hosted, delighting the audience with his Austin Powers and Rocky impressions. His first poetry experience was at the old Urbana’s opening night last year. “The first night that I went there, Urbana was a very unassuming place. Poetry seemed very attainable,” said Rempe. “Urbana made me believe that I had something to say, too. I was inspired and eventually started writing and reading my poems at different venues.”

Jones, who performed excerpts from “Surface Transit” at Urbana’s Dec. 5 show, said, “I think people could make an argument that getting up on stage and doing excerpts from a one-woman show is definitely not poetry anymore than getting up there and standing on your head while you do a poem,” she said. “But hopefully the audience gets to experience something that is stimulating.”

Under bright spot lights upon a tiny stage, Jones moved the audience to silence with poems about back-up singers and a former lovers. She read her poems in character, singing some lines like a gospel singer and cursing some lines with the fury of a hurt lover. She said, “I got a little funny with reading poetry tonight because I kind of felt like I had some freedom. Sometimes I get up and perform poems in character to kind of see how the poetry works with the character factor.”

Poets and hosts from the Nuyorican and Bar 13 have also regularly participated in the open mike slams this season. In every spare second, poets are engrossed in conversation with each other, hugging and screaming as if at a family reunion. “There’s a strong sense of community around here,” said Bar 13’s “A Little Bit Louder” series host Guy Le Charles Gonzalez, 30. He said, “Urbana is run by a group who are all young and very committed to the idea of spoken word and slam being an open forum so it’s not cliquish.”

Career opportunities may also knock on a poet’s door with a slam. Wilkinson said that she secured many acting gigs, such as the lead in a production of Aristophane’s “Lysistrata,” using her slam poems as audition material.

With a growing audience of novice and established poets, Urbana is slowly becoming the city’s venue for fun and experimentation. “Urbana seems more open to crazy. It’s the home of crazy and silly,” said Sia. “I’m sure people will get live and wild on stage like you’ve never seen before, bordering on performance art.”

For others, the venue will draw them into the poetry circle like an addiction. Said Rempe, “Urbana is where I took my first hit of poetry, and it got me hooked.”