by Marisa Demarco
Daily Lobo
Eirik Ott, a.k.a. Big Poppa E, had to pee in a bottle once while driving at 70 miles an hour - but that's not the point of this article.
The point is that this evening, two renowned poets who make up Broken Word, Big Poppa E and Matthew John Conley, will be performing at UNM while on the Busted Tooth tour. And if you ask Ott, he might tell you the story about the bottle, which does get worse from there.
Broken Word has a mission. A press release states that this mission is "to free poetry from dusty textbooks and breath life back into it with the intensity of a great rock and roll show."
Matthew Conley is part of the initial momentum behind the slam scene in Albuquerque. He was voted the 1998 Best Spoken Word artist in a Weekly Alibi poll. He is also a UNM alumnus who was the first person to do a live reading on the ground floor of the Humanities Building as his bachelor's thesis in the Creative Writing Program in 1997. Conley said he is stoked to be performing at UNM.
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"I'm really excited to come back and show what I've been doing for the past few years," Conley said. "I don't think I was the most-liked student in the English Department, so I have a chip on my shoulder. I want to show them how far I've come."
Conley and Ott met in the 1996 Taos Poetry circus. They continued to run into each other on the slam poetry circuit, and have mutual respect for one another's work. Tonight they will be reading a lot of new material, in addition to old repertoire like Ott's infamous "Wussy Boy" poem.
They have challenged each other to write one haiku every day for a year. Tonight's performance will also include a haiku death match.
"The haiku death match is where each of us does a haiku until I totally kick Matthew's ass," Ott said.
Conley cites his girlfriend, cityscapes - buildings specifically - Frontier breakfast burritos, gin and really good poets as inspiration.
"Big Poppa E's girlfriend really inspires me, too," Conley joked.
"Really good poets" for Conley translates to people like Albuquerque's own Danny Solis, Rahzel, the Roots and Etel Adnan.
"She's [Adnan] like the greatest poet that nobody ever heard of in their lives," Conley said. "She is unbelievable and she is going to take over the world. She's like the poet version of PJ Harvey - mysterious and alluringly evil. I want to be her when I grow up."
Conley and Ott were recognized as two of the "Top Ten Poets to Watch in 2002" by the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Conley has performed as part of the Lollapalooza Tour and has been featured on PBS. Ott has been a National Poetry Slam champion and performed on HBO's Def Poetry showcase. Still, Ott maintains that the slam you see on TV is not the be all and end all of slam.
"Unfortunately, television is a medium for the very hip and the very young so the people on [Def Poetry] are very hip and young," Ott said. "If you have an 80-year-old poet or a female poet not within those parameters of beauty or a black poet not influenced by hip-hop he won't be on the show. So I think it's a very narrow representation of what this community has to offer."
