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Writing on the Air Interview

Posted by on September 14, 2014
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For my first radio interview ever, I was part of a four-artist panel. Three out of four of us where there because of our participation in the upcoming Austin Feminist Poetry Festival. The lone duck artist with the second best hair, only to my dreaded head, was a documentary filmmaker, searching for his birth mother. I figured there was no need to be dressed up since it was radio. Instead, I dressed for capoeira dance rehearsal, which was immediately after the interview.  All I can say is thank God I looked half decent since the filmmaker came flank with his crew.

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I found the microphone a bit awkward, but that didn’t stop me from posing as if I was reading for this picture! I wanted to get all the “tourist” shots out the way before our segment began. I wasn’t nervous about the interview itself, but all the restrictions: no curse words, no graphic sex, no explicit descriptions of genitals, no calls to actions, no fart jokes. Out of all of them, only the last one had no chance of slipping out of my mouth.

I briefly recounted how I started writing poetry to remedy reoccurring bouts of insomnia. So when I was asked to teach a workshop for the Austin Feminist Poetry Festival, I agreed on the condition my workshop be called “Spoken Word for Insomniacs.” Then I read a rated G spoken word piece, “A Circle Has No Corners,” that was inspired by a conversation I overheard one of my capoeira teachers having and a recent bout of insomnia. I started reading it at 16:37 minutes into the interview.

I’ve never taken pills to sleep nor drank coffee to wake up, choosing first to exercise my stress out then later, writing it out. Writing had opened so many doors for me, given the flexibility the medium affords.

Listen to the interview:

Read “A Circle Has No Corners”: http://www.mathdreads.com/?p=886

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