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SIERRA VISTA — A youthful poetry slam is coming to Buena High School on Friday.
It’s part of the ongoing Buena Visiting Author Series, which recently presented Holocaust survivor Stephen Nasser to the students.
“We live in poetry,” international slam poet and Buena graduate Logan Phillips said. “Everyone, whether they like it or not, is a poet.” By that, he means creative words will flow freely from a person’s stream of consciousness. The mind is not linear but poetic, Phillips said.
Slam poetry is an art form that is known by other names, including spoken word and performance poetry. It involves spirited audiences who rate stand-up troupers in real time. Each performer gets three minutes to deliver before the next competitor stands up.
 Buena High School graduate Logan Phillips returns to the campus Friday for the Buena Visiting Author Series. (Courtesy of Pilar Campos) |
“The audience has the power to ‘yank’ the poet off the stage at any time,” Phillips said.
In case Mrs. C is concerned, the Buena visit will not be a full-blown poetry slam per se, Phillips said, but it will be a showcase of performance poetry.
Phillips is the son of Judy Phillips, a kindergarten teacher at Pueblo del Sol Elementary School for 30 years. After graduating from Buena in 2001, Phillips attended Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and became involved in the poetry slam movement. He has competed at the national championships four consecutive years.
Since 2006, Phillips has lived near Mexico City, where he has served as professor of Hispanic American literature and advanced translation at Universidad Internacional. He works with an experimental-theater troupe in a realm known as verbo balo, or spoken video. It involves digital media and live-video projections plus the spoken word.
Phillips performed Tuesday at Douglas High School and was at Bisbee High School on Wednesday. Today he was to visit Cochise College in Douglas.
He is accompanied by two longtime Albuquerque, N.M., poets, Jasmine “Jazz” Cuffee and Carlos Contreras, who are also both in their 20s. Cuffee is the assistant educational director of the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. Contreras is a professional performer. This week is a warm-up for the 26th annual Tucson Poetry Festival, which will be April 10-13.
Phillips was asked if there are comparisons to “On the Road” author Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation of the 1950s and early 1960s.
“The Beat movement was so powerful,” Phillips said. “It was the last time poetry made a deep impact on American society.”
Logan Phillips, Jasmine Cuffee and Carlos Contreras will provide two performances for Buena High School students on Friday. The troupe will perform for the community that evening, from 7:30 to 9, in the Buena library.
• Logan Phillips: dirtyverbs.com
• Spoken Video: verbobala.com
• Tucson Poetry Festival: tucsonpoetryfestival.org
TED MORRIS can be reached at 515-4614 or cityeditor@svherald.com.
