The best poetry being written and performed today in Canada and the United States is by an emerging generation of poets who "fuse" the worlds of the oral and the written traditions. These are poets comfortable in print or squinting under the stage lights, whose work crosses all boundaries--performance, spoken word, Gen-X, Web-page poems, slam and MTV-style tele-poetics. Poetry Nation is the first anthology to comprehensively trace the roots of performance and spoken word --from the Beat Generation through to today's sound poets. Poetry Nation is a compelling overview of all the movements in current "alternative" poetries, with special attention to women, gay, Black, Asian, and indigenous writers. Major figures are presented alongside the most exciting younger voices. The anthology features Allen Ginsberg's last poem, a never-collected poem by Evelyn Lau, and a newly-discovered love poem by Ian Stephens. One hundred cutting-edge poets including Sandra Cisneros, Bill Bissett, Clifton Joseph, Ras Baraka, Stan Rogal, Steven Heighton, Lynn Crosbie, Robert Priest, Nicole Blackman, David McGimpsey, Louise Bak, Golda Fried, and Hal Sirowitz.
Regie Cabico is a recipient of a 1997 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. His work appears in numerous anthologies, including
Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Caf (Henry Holt), and Political Voices, Political Visions (SUNY Press). He was winner of the 1993 New York Poetry Slam, a road poet on Lollapalooza, and the opening act of MTV's "Free Your Mind Spoken Word Tour."
Todd Swift is one of Canada's leading poetry activists. In 1995 he began hosting Montreal's Vox Hunt Slam spoken words series which the Globe & Mail called "unique in North America" for its "Brechtian mix of European cabaret and North American vaudeville." Swift has performed his poetry across North America and co-hosted the 1995 U.S. National Slam Finals. As a screenwriter for television, he has had his work produced for HBO, Fox, and Paramount.
Bob Holman recently produced the PBS series "The United States of Poetry," edited the companion anthology (Abrams) and produced the soundtrack CD (MouthAlmighty/Mercury). He was co-editor of the award-winning anthology, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Caf, and is the recipient of three Emmys.
