It was over a month ago that I walked into the MacBride auditorium to see slam poet Big Poppa E perform at [J]Amnesty. His words are still resonating. I remember his ode to “every gay kid who was ever beaten up for being gay…and every straight kid who was ever beaten up for being gay.” I remember “Tiger Lily,” how a girl names her period after recovering from an eating disorder, once her body has healed “enough to bleed again.” The next day, speaking to a poetry class, he revealed, “I almost never read that poem out loud.”
Mostly I remember the way this renowned poet, three-time HBO Def Poet, Austin Slam Poetry Team member, and National Slam Poetry Champion came to Amnesty International’s event and made it theirs instead of his.
It must be easy to get a big head as a respected poet, but Big Poppa E came off down-to-earth and genuinely interested and impressed with Amnesty International’s work for human rights issues. He stepped aside for members of the Feminist Majority to speak about a protest, continued to call attention to the human rights booths at the back of the auditorium, and insisted that we as the audience get off our butts and do something to change the world. It was hard not to listen to him. He adjusted his readings around the schedule of the other performers: Capes of Lead, Olivia Rose, Jarrett Hugg, and Muffin Top. Instead of performing for a straight hour and then allowing a certain poetry reviewer to duck out early, he showcased the other acts by truly acting as an emcee who happened to be performing amazing poetry, instead of a visiting poet who required his own allotted time slot.
He told the Daily Iowan, “I love [Amnesty International’s] goals and energy. I love how [the members] get young people...to do something with their world. I love how they give them the tools to do that and show them that all it takes is one person to really affect someone’s life.” Throughout the evening, he embodied that spirit with his personable performance and also with his poetry.
“Propers,” a favorite, was a structured shout-out to the kids who feel alone. At other events, he often introduces this poem with an anecdote of reading in a tiny town and being approached by “the one kid with red dreadlocks.” “Propers” is a response to that loneliness that we have all felt, the idea of a poet to reaching out, saying “I understand—I used to be you” just might be enough to, as he is quoted saying, “really affect someone’s life.”
And it seems like he meant it - he reached out to individual members of the audience, giving them nicknames for the colors of their hair or their shirts (I was "Green") and interrupting his poems to interact directly with the audience. As he showed off the guns of poetry with the line, "I don't pump iron, I pump irony," and I laughed, he stopped, pointed, and said, "Oh, shut up. You knew it was coming." (So I shut up.) But Big Poppa E's personal interaction made audience members feel as though he was speaking directly to them - that we were all the kid with the red dreadlocks.
Reviewer: Nora Heaton
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