Word X Word Concludes with Grand Finale Concert

Submitted by Seth Rogovoy on August 30, 2010 - 12:58pm

 

 
Text and photos by Seth Rogovoy
 
 
(PITTSFIELD, Mass., August 29, 2010) – The week-long Word X Word Festival came to a rousing conclusion on Saturday night with the crowning of Seth Brown as the poetry-slam champion at Shawn’s Barber Shop, followed by a music-and-spoken word show featuring 2004 National Poetry Slam Champion Rives at the Colonial Theatre to bring the curtain down on the festivities.
 
 
 
It was quite a week, with multiple events in multiple venues every night for a week flying the banner of Word X Word. These included a Dish + Dine event with artists Maggie Mailer and Nanny Vonnegut at Ferrin Gallery; a run of Rudi Bach’s performance piece, Maybe you will marry a red-haired woman, based on the poetry of Tony Hoagland, at the New Stage, and Douglass Truth’s magical one-man/one-woman show, Death as a Salesman, evenings at Pittsfield Contemporary Dot Com (a new art gallery on North Street); musical performances every night at Mission Bar + Tapas; several music-and-spoken word evenings at Pittsfield Contemporary Dot Com; bands and performers at the Lantern and the Micro Stage; and other official and unofficial events that made downtown Pittsfield truly alive and brimming with arts and entertainment for at least one entire week out of the year.
 
 
 
It came as little surprise that Seth Brown won the Poetry Slam competition – anyone who has seen him recite, improvise, and freestyle before around town knows that he is a charming, funny and fleet linguist. He has the expressive face of a comic and poems – such as one about being a lover of books – that are tailor-made for a slam audience, and he has mastered the art of leaving space in some of his work for in-the-moment improvisation, including incorporating lines and references from other poets that have performed only minutes earlier. Brown is one to watch; he’s the Berkshires’ most likely to succeed in this exciting art form.
 
 
 
The headlining poet for the finale at the Colonial was Rives, whose form is hard to pin down, as he is not merely a reciter of words, but a storyteller, a performer, and an entertainer. He is a master of the art of focus, and he incorporates the latest technology in some of his performance – he performed one poem with the aid of pre-recorded beats and a video on a hand-held iPad, which came across less as a gimmick and more as wizardry. For this sort of thing, he’s been called “the first 2.0 poet,” and his smooth delivery and brilliant improvisations were a model of aspirations for budding slam-poets.
 
 
 
The evening also included musical performances by Langhorne Slim and musicians from the New England Americana Festival.
 
 
 
By the end of the week, the festival had achieved exactly what festivals are meant to achieve – more than just presenting a series of unrelated or similar performances, but a real sense of shared community. Even those who didn’t get to every performance (probably an impossibility) or only a few shows during the week were able to compare and contrast, swap notes with familiar faces and plenty of unfamiliar ones.
 
 
 
And the sight and sound of people giving the sort of standing ovations for poets that
are usually reserved for rock stars (especially in the case of the dazzling Roger Bonair-Agard, who read at Pittsfield Contemporary Dot Com on Thursday night) was enough to make one pinch oneself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. Applause for poetry? It happened in Pittsfield this past week.
 
 
 
Kudos to festival promoter Jim Benson, owner of Mission Tapas + Bar and The Market, and his entire team, including his right arm, marketing guru Carrie Saldo, and his left hand, chef James Burden – as well as to spoken-word curators Taylor Mali and Marie-Elizabeth Mali -- for making this sprawling festival come off with very few if any hitches. The festival is still young (this was only its second year), and there are plenty of lessons still to be learned, but the prevailing feeling throughout was that this was something that not only needs to become an annual institution, but something that can spawn a year-round scene devoted to performance of the word in all its infinite variety.
 
 
 
 
Seth Rogovoy is Berkshire Living’s award-winning editor-in-chief and cultural critic, a musician, and the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet and The Essential Klezmer: A Music Lover’s Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul Music.
 
 

 

Bookmark/Search this post with:
Create a Solar Powered Web Site for Just $500
view counter