If you don't know what a poetry slam is, then you need to get out a little more often and expand your entertainment options beyond movies and the occasional Stephen King novel. You should also read Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz (Soft Skull Press, 2007).

My first distinct memory of Cristin is from sometime in the Summer of 1998, standing outside of the Chelsea Feast Diner on West 23rd Street – the original home of what would eventually become the Urbana poetry slam, now a centerpiece of the Bowery Poetry Club's eclectic schedule. I recall feeling sorry for her, this humorous young girl who was so clearly, I thought, in over her head, innocently mixed up with the likes of my mortal enemies in poetry slam, Beau Sia, Evert Eden and, by extension, Taylor Mali and Bob Holman, all key figures from the controversial Mouth Almighty team that won the 1997 National Poetry Slam, much to the chagrin of a large part of the national slam "community” (an oxymoron, that, a la the "United" States of America, I'd come to realize over the next few years ).

It was immediately after a pre-Nationals “scrimmage" slam – where my team, representing the Nuyorican Poets Café, had beaten hers on their home turf – during which I’d engaged in quite a bit of unsportsmanlike conduct, heckling them at every opportunity, booing their high scores and cheering their low scores, to the point where our coach, Roger Bonair-Agard, had to walk me out of the diner on a couple of occasions to calm me down. I remember apologizing to both Cristin and Amanda Nazario, her equally innocent bystander teammate, for being caught in the crossfire in what I fondly look back on now as one of the stupidest rivalries in the history of rivalries.

My next most distinct memory of Cristin comes from the summer of 2000, onstage at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Providence, RI, Nuyorican Slammaster Keith Roach and myself sandwiching her for a picture, each with a hand on the championship trophy her team had won, beating out both of our teams in a hard-fought finale that represented the final step in repairing the damage wrought by that stupid rivalry a couple of years prior. [Ed.: Read the book!]

A few years later, when Cristin told me she was writing a history of the poetry slam in New York City, I happily sat down with her for an interview to offer my two cents on my own experiences, absolutely thrilled that she was the one writing it, someone who was not only a notable, if underappreciated, veteran poet and organizer in her own right, but as importantly, someone who had always managed to stay above the pettiness that had often marked the local and national scenes.

While I haven't yet read Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam at the time this interview was conducted and published, knowing Cristin and the years of hard work she put into researching and writing it, I'm confident it will quickly come to be seen as the definitive history of poetry slam in New York City, earning a place next to Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café on every bookshelf as an exemplary representative of the important contributions the New York City poetry slam scene, via its most notable organizers and practitioners, has made to our literary and popular culture.

NOTE: If she bombs, though, I'll have to write a scathing follow-up to this ridiculously long, insightful and entertaining interview with one of my favorite poets, and more importantly, favorite people: Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, Notable New Yorker.

Enjoy!

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