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Source: The News & Advance, Lynchburg, Va.迷你倉Sept. 18--Why you should know her: Patricia, a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, will be doing a reading in town today as part of Randolph College's Visiting Writer Series, which offers students and the community an opportunity to engage professional writers in a forum where "no question is off limits."BackgroundBorn and raised in Chicago, the acclaimed author studied journalism at Southern Illinois University before landing a job as a reporter for the Chicago Sun Times and, later, The Boston Globe. She appeared on the metro, op-ed and national pages there, covering Bill Clinton's inauguration, the Urban Peace and Justice Summit and the uprising that followed the Rodney King verdict.In her first two books, 1991's "Life According to Motown" and 1992's "Big Towns, Big Talk," she culled stories from newspapers, the past and folklore to create a collection of personal poems told from the points of view of people like Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched in 1955; a skinhead; a murdered gas station attendant; and early rock 'n' roll pioneer Little Richard.As a four-time National Poetry Slam champion, she appeared in the 1998 film "SlamNation" and on season two of HBO's "Def Poetry Jam" in 2003.Patricia also wrote "Blood Dazzler," which detailed the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and was a 2008 National Book Award finalist.In her latest, 2012's "Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah," she weaves the story of her family's origin with tales of Motown, the Great Northern Migration and her own coming of age. Propelled by tightly-controlled lyricism, intimate childhood moments are set against a tidal wave of history and discovery, as she shifts from spoken word to free verse to traditional forms of poetic rhythm.Patricia currently is doing a year residency teaching creative writing at Sierra Nevada College, where she spoke by phone last week about why tone is important, what role it plays in reaching an audience and how her poetry can be a tool for helping people find their own voice.For those who might not know as much as others about spoken word or slam poetry, how would you define these particular forms of expression?"Basically, all it means to me is that you care a lot about how the poem reaches the audience. It's one thing to have a sheet of paper in front of your face and to drone for 40 minutes. It's another thing to realize that there's going to be at least one person in every audience who's going to really need to hear whatever it is you're going to say. And you do whatever you can to get that person engaged, and that means having a more conversational tone. We're all storytellers, you know?"So there's a level of enthusiasm when you're reading it, as opposed to some sort of monotone delivery?"Right. right. And it doesn't have to be memorized or anything. That's a mistaken notion that if you're going to do performance poetry you come out and aren't allowed to have any paper. You can read the poem, but you have to read as if you've lived with it, and you own it. You could hand me something that I've never seen before, and I can read it to an audience. But there's no excuse for reading your own poetry that way."Is that why Hurricane Katrina was the right topic to address in "Blood Dazzler," because it impacted you pers自存倉nally?"I actually don't have any specific connection there. I watched Hurricane Katrina unfold the same way thousands of other people did: on television, online and in newspapers. But there was one event I knew I had to write about, and that was the story about 34 nursing home residents who were left behind. I had an aunt who died in a nursing home, so I spent a lot of time there. And I thought about how the lights were out, and the water was rising, and they were pushing those little buttons next to the bed for people to come, and no one was coming. I couldn't get that image out of my mind. So I thought it was important to keep Katrina in the creative conversation for a while."Did the mainstream success of spoken word and slam poetry, especially during the popularity of "Def Poetry Jam" in the mid-2000s, surprise you?"Not really. I guess the difference is if you're in the community nothing surprises you. I mean, people in the community worked very hard to get larger audiences and to get their names out there. So when that recognition finally began to happen, it wasn't a surprise because people had worked so hard for it. What's harder is to go in the other direction. Once I decided that I was a storyteller, I wanted to be acknowledged for work I was doing that wasn't on the stage. And it's always been easy to point at the spoken word community and say, 'Oh, well, what you guys are doing is just theater and not well-crafted.' So proving the poems that worked onstage worked just as well on the page was a little bit more difficult."With "Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah," the subject matter seems rather close to home. Was that an intentional move on your part?"Yeah. I mean, after a while, you can do general commentary on things that everybody knows about, like Katrina and other social situations. But, eventually, you realize there are a lot of stories that haven't been told in your own life. It's kind of up to the poet whether or not they're at a stage in their career where they feel comfortable telling those stories. Even if you're talking about personal stories, they're still universal. There were a lot of people who were raised the same way I was raised, at the same time, in the same circumstances. As a writer, you owe it to yourself to turn back and look at your life and deal with those things. You have to figure out where you're rooted in the world."Do you see your work as something that's trying to be a voice for people who may not be able to speak for themselves?"I wouldn't say everything I've written is like that, but that's certainly a very important aspect of it. There are going to be people who never really realize that they have a way to speak up about things. They are basically experts at letting things happen to them. But you're not speaking so much for them, as you're speaking to let them know that they, too, have the ability to speak. I think people need to realize that, from the beginning, they have that option. Sometimes all it takes is hearing a story told by somebody else to sort of light that fire in them. So you're not just trying to get people to listen; you're trying to get them to listen and pick up a pen."Copyright: ___ (c)2013 The News & Advance (Lynchburg, Va.) Visit The News & Advance (Lynchburg, Va.) at .newsadvance.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉