Danny Solis, Albuquerque Slam Poet Laureate Champion
Daily Lobo: How did you become interested in poetry?
Danny Solis: I always loved poetry since I was really small. I had two older sisters that would read poetry to me when I was a baby, before I could walk or talk or anything. They would read me nursery rhymes and Dr. Seuss, and it always felt natural to me to love it and be part of it. It was never something I decided to do. Poetry was always just a part of my life.
DL: What made you decide to share and perform your poetry?
DS: Well, I have been a ham all my life. I like attention. But being a ham is one thing, but to work on the discipline of learning how to perform a poem is something I have been doing seriously since about 1991. Patricia Smith, who is a great poet in and beyond slam, inspired the performance part of it. I consider her my main mentor in the world of performance poetry; she and others along the way have inspired me. Marc Smith, Dana Bryan - ---(there are) lots of great influences and people I have admired over the years.
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DL: What do you think spoken word brings out that written word cannot?
DS: I think it is like when a songwriter performs their song. I look at reading a poem on a page like the experience of listening to a record. You can sit in your house, clean your house, or sit alone and enjoy a glass of wine and listen to that record, and that is one level of the experience. But the performer is not in front of you and you can't see their face or what they are doing. That is the same as reading a book of poetry alone. I think it is not the same. The personal experience of watching someone perform their own poem is one of the finest experiences that exists in the world of art and performance, especially when it transcends the art form. There is a poet I saw a couple years ago named Gypsy Yo, and she did a poem about her daughter that made me weep like a baby. It was a great moment for me because not only did it transcend so many things in terms of art, but also it reminded me of why I love poetry so much and why I do this. To be able to reach people in that way if I can - that's the goal: to create good writing and then try and get inside that writing and deliver it like no one else can deliver it.
DL: Can you remember the first time you performed a poem?
DS: I think it was when I was five and I read the first poem I had ever written to my family sitting in the kitchen. I don't think they even wanted to hear it, but I was talking so loud that they couldn't resist. Even reading a poem off a piece of paper in a monotone voice at an open mic, which is what I did before I discovered slam poetry, is performance. It isn't very good performance, but it is performance. I started slamming and really crafting my performance in Boston, back in 1992, that is when I really started working hard on it and being disciplined about the craft.
DL: What advice can you give to poets who are getting started and are afraid to share it or write it?
DS: I say write the truest thing you can write. You don't have to show it to anybody or worry if it is good poetry. Just put that pen to paper, put those fingers to the keyboard and write, write, write. You can keep it private for your entire life, like Emily Dickinson did, or you can come out and start sharing it with the world and performing it. That is the first thing. The second thing for anyone interested in poetry is, read poetry. Read all kinds of poetry. Read Shakespeare, read Mary Oliver, Anne Sexton, Joy Harjo, Maxine Kumin, Sappho, Pablo Neruda. Read everybody, everybody you can. Even if you do not necessarily like someone's poetry, you are going to learn something from reading it. You will learn something that will help your art.
