Alix Olson | |
|---|---|
 Olson in June 2003 | |
| Born | 1975 (age 48–49) Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Oxford College of Emory University professor and spoken word poet |
Alix L. Olson (born 1975 [1] ) is an American poet who works exclusively in spoken word. [2] She uses her work to address issues of capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, heterosexism, misogyny, and patriarchy. She identifies as a queer feminist. [3]
Olson was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1975 to parents who were both politically minded professors and held ideals that she believes were passed along to her. She has recalled early childhood memories sitting under a table coloring protest signs. [3]
Olson attended Stockholm University in 1996. She received a BA from Wesleyan University in 2007 and a PhD in political science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a graduate certificate in advanced feminist studies. [4]
Olson taught as faculty at the Juniper Institute for Young Writers at University of Massachusetts Amherst in Summer 2011 and 2012, at CSU Summer Arts at California State University in Fresno, California, and at the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val Kill's Young Women's Leadership.
In 1997, Olson began performing at the Nuyorican Poets Café, where she helped develop the 1998 Nuyorican poetry slam team. She and fellow Nuyorican team members Lynne Procope, Steve Colman, and Guy LeCharles Gonzalez won the 1998 National Poetry Slam championship in Austin, Texas. [5] Soft Skull Press published Burning Down the House, an anthology that showcased poetry by Olson and her teammates and poetry by Roger Bonair-Agard, the 1998 Nuyorican Team's coach. [6] In 1999, Olson beat Stacey Ann Chin in a slam off, giving her the title of the OUTWRITE slam champion. [7] Olson recorded and published three spoken word CDs: Built Like That (2001), Independence Meal (2004), and Protagonist (2014). She was the subject of the documentary Left Lane: On the Road with Folk Poet Alix Olson, which was released in 2004. [8] [9] In June 2006, Olson co-hosted the Sixth Annual Outmusic Awards with Ari Gold at the Knitting Factory in Rochester, New York. [10]
She is editor of Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution with a foreword by Eve Ensler, a spoken word anthology published in 2007, [11] which features contributions by Patricia Smith, Eileen Myles, Suheir Hammad, Staceyann Chin, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, Lynn Breedlove, Michelle Tea, and others. [11] Olson's poem "Warrior" is referenced in the book Fight like a Girl: How to be a Fearless Feminist by Megan Seely. [12]
In July 2014, blogger Justyn Hintze wrote about Apple's engraving service, which she felt was exhibiting sexist programming. [13] According to Hintze, the programming came to her attention when she attempted to engrave her new iDevice with an Olson lyric, "I’ll give myself a lube job, shake my broomstick 'til my clit throbs", a lyric Hintze described as "feminist, sex-positive, and it makes me smile. Every. single. time."
The blog and subsequent campaign on Twitter, #MyClitMyChoice, garnered media attention. [14] [15] [16] [17]
Olson's work has been featured on NPR, HBO's Def Poetry Jam , Rachel Maddow's Air America radio show, The New York Times , The Washington Post , Curve magazine, Girlfriends magazine, The Advocate , Out magazine, the Lesbian Review of Books, and other media outlets. [4] She has appeared on the covers of Lambda Book Report, Lavender Lens, Velvet Park magazine, [18] and Ms. magazine. [19] [18] She has spoken to the National Organization for Women, GenderPAC, the Lesbian Summit, and poetry festivals in several countries. In 2004, she performed for at March for Women's Lives in Washington, D.C. [18]
Olson is an assistant professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Oxford College of Emory University in Oxford, Georgia.
bell hooks described Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution (Seal Press, 2007), which Olson edited, as "daring to be heard.. to resurrect you." [4] Historian and activist Howard Zinn called Olson "an ingenious poet, a brilliant performer, a funny person, a serious thinker. Quite simply, extraordinary." [18] A critique in Utne Reader calls Olson "...the spoken word diva everyone's talking about." [18] In describing her live performances, The Progressive calls Olson "an electrifying performer who seduces the audience with wit and energy, spinning tales of life on the road between her fiery poems. A sharpshooter with theatrical flair, Olson oozes both love and rage." The Progressive referenced Olson as a "word warrior", [18] and Ms. Magazine described her as a "road-poet-on-a-mission." [18]
A poetry slam is a competitive art event in which poets perform spoken word poetry before a live audience and a panel of judges. While formats can vary, slams are often loud and lively, with audience participation, cheering and dramatic delivery.
Spoken word is an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a 20th-century continuation of an ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetics of recitation and word play, such as the performer's live intonation and voice inflection. Spoken word is a "catchall" term that includes any kind of poetry recited aloud, including poetry readings, poetry slams, jazz poetry, pianologues, musical readings, and hip hop music, and can include comedy routines and prose monologues. Unlike written poetry, the poetic text takes its quality less from the visual aesthetics on a page, but depends more on phonaesthetics, or the aesthetics of sound.
Edwin Torres is a Nuyorican performance poet. His work incorporates vocal and physical improvisation. He is the author of Ameriscopia, One Night: Poems for the Sleepy, Yes Thing No Thing, and several other poetic books. He also has produced recordings titled Oceano Rise, Novo, and Holy Kid. He is a member of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E school.
Paul Beatty is an American author and an associate professor of writing at Columbia University. In 2016, he won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout. It was the first time a writer from the United States was honored with the Man Booker.
Roger Bonair-Agard is a poet and performance artist. He has made numerous television and radio appearances, has led countless workshops and lectures, and has performed his poetry at many US universities as well as at international festivals in Germany, Switzerland, Milan, and Jamaica. He has been accused of sexual abuse by multiple people, including other poets.
Beaufort Benjamin Sia is an American slam poet.
Russell Simmons presents Def Poetry, better known as simply Def Poetry Jam or Def Poetry, is a spoken word poetry television series hosted by Mos Def and airing on HBO between 2002 and 2007. The series features performances by established and up-and-coming spoken word poets. Performances also include special appearances by well-known actors and musicians, as well as occasional performances by Mos Def himself. Co-created by Bruce George, Danny Simmons, Deborah Pointer, Stan Lathan, and Russell Simmons, the show is a spin-off of the popular Def Comedy Jam which began airing on HBO in the 1990s. As with Def Comedy, Simmons appears at the end of every episode to thank the audience.
Gary Mex Glazner, is a poet and author. He was the Managing Director of the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City, 2007 to 2010.
Buddy Wakefield is an American poet, three-time world champion spoken word artist, and the most toured performance poet in history. His latest works have been released by Righteous Babe Records (album) and Write Bloody Publishing (books). He has lived in Sanborn, New York, Baytown, Texas, Seattle, Washington, Los Angeles, California, and currently lives in Porto, Portugal.
Lynne Procope is a Trinidadian-born American poet. She is one of the founders of the louderARTS Project. In 1998, Procope made the 1998 Nuyorican Poetry Slam team. She and her fellow Nuyorican team members Alix Olson, Steve Coleman and Guy LeCharles Gonzalez would go on to win the 1998 National Poetry Slam Championship that year in Austin, TX. This championship would lead to Soft Skull Press publishing the anthology Burning Down the House which showcased poetry by Olson, Procope, Coleman and Gonzalez as well as poetry by the 1998 Nuyorican Team's coach, Roger Bonair-Agard. Her best known poems include "Elemental Woman", "Flectere" and "Evidence of Injury". Her writing focuses on the human experience of women and marginalized groups.
Tracie Morris is an American poet. She is also a performance artist, vocalist, voice consultant, creative non-fiction writer, critic, scholar, bandleader, actor and non-profit consultant. Morris is from Brooklyn, New York. Morris's experimental sound poetry is progressive and improvisational. She is a tenured professor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Staceyann Chin is a spoken-word poet, performing artist and LGBT rights political activist. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Pittsburgh Daily, and has been featured on 60 Minutes. She was also featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where she shared her struggles growing up as a gay person in Jamaica. Chin's first full-length poetry collection was published in 2019.
The National Poetry Slam (NPS) was a performance poetry competition where teams from across the United States, Canada, and, occasionally, Europe and Australia, participate in a large-scale poetry slam. The event occurred in early August every year and in different U.S. cities. The last National Poetry Slam took place in 2018 in Chicago, Illinois.
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz is an American nonfiction writer and poet.
Meliza Bañales is an American writer, performer, and slam poet. She has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Cruz, and Los Angeles.
Sini Anderson is an American film director, producer, performance artist, choreographer, dancer and poet, from Chicago, Illinois. Anderson is widely known for directing The Punk Singer (2013), a documentary about riot grrrl musician Kathleen Hanna's legacy and experience with late-stage Lyme disease.
The Individual World Poetry Slam (iWPS) is a yearly poetry slam tournament put on by Poetry Slam, Inc. that pits individual slam poets from around the world against one another.
Cheryl Burke, known professionally as Cheryl B, was an American journalist, spoken word poet, performance artist and playwright, associated with the East Village arts scene in New York City. She is best known for her autobiographical book My Awesome Place: The Autobiography of Cheryl B, which was published posthumously and was co-winner, with John Irving's novel In One Person, of the 2013 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Literature.
JoAnn Elizabeth "Eli" Coppola was an American poet and active contributor to the San Francisco spoken word scene in the mid 1980s and 1990s. She wrote poetry on a variety of subjects including disability, sexuality, and social injustice.
Rachel Kann is an American poet, spoken word artist, writer, actress, dancer, educator, and spiritualist. A TEDx UCLA poet, Kann has released three spoken word albums and published four poetry collections, as well as a children's book, You Sparkle Inside. She has performed her work at venues including Walt Disney Concert Hall and Nuyorican Poets Café, and shared the stage with artists including DaKAH, Saul Williams, and Sage Francis.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
