Poe Show in Phoenix
Posted by Brody on January 21, 2010Twenty years ago already, I was living in a cowtown, and against my better judgement I let my friend have access to my key to the university’s black box theater. I’d been living in Phoenix before that, and saw a rise in alternative art, and was fueled by it. In this unnamed cowtown, there wasn’t a lot going on with alternative anything, except for music, so I was hungry to see interesting people doing interesting things. My friend had a group of collaborators who liked to get together in cowtowns and spend weekends creating large events with unusual art, and of course unusual people.
This was a lot like a happening, except a version 20 years later, and there wasn’t much formal training. Not that they needed it, because the aesthetic was supposed to be rough and chaotic, and it certainly was. Some people read new work out loud, there were couples performing in front of video screens with live music, and people dancing while tearing pieces of plastic off the walls. It was pretty great. I was getting ready to read a poem, and one of the L.A. artists told me that poetry was dead. At the time, it seemed like an ironic quotation of something we already knew, because we were all participating in something that had been done already, only not in this particular combination. So, when there are events in Phoenix that are worth looking into, and sound as inviting as a luxury hotel, Phoenix is the place to be.
Who knows why, but the alternative art scene here never died, and neither did poetry, although you might have to dig for it. The 2010 Annual Poe Show is one such event, where some of the most essential experimental artists in Phoenix and Tempe will be coming together again for an evening of dada poetry in performance, as a birthday party for Edgar Allen Poe. Some of the town’s most iconic artists, including Robert X. Planet (still edgy), Trish Jus Trish, Jeff Falk, and the Klute, will be there to demonstrate that poetry, performance, and Poe might all indeed be dead, but that’s not stopping any of us.
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