11 Questions with Jason Bayani
INTERVIEW BY STEVIE EDWARDS, Editor-in-Chief
1. How and when did you first get involved with the poetry slam?
I kept hearing about these Poetry Slams while I was in college at San Francisco State. Never went to one because I was running around with this crew who was doing Asian party promotions. Around this time (mid to late 90s) in San Francisco there was a bit of an artistic surge happening amongst young Filipino artists around performance and poetry and theatre and music and comedy that was inspiring as hell and I wanted to be a part of it.
The first person I’ve ever seen perform their poetry live was at this spot that used to be in Oakland called The Upper Room, and I saw Barbara Jane Reyes, who has moved on and done some pretty big things in the literary world, and it blew me away. I saw her doing her thing and it just hit me in the guts. I said, "I want to get on stage and do that ." When I graduated, I had been mostly doing theatre and felt I didn’t really have a future in acting, but I still needed something creative to do, so focusing in on spoken word seemed like the most practical and least costly way of being able feed those needs because I get to write AND perform and to do this; all I have to do is go out and drink beer. So I hit three slams within a few days of each other: Second Sundays at the now defunct Justice League in SF when it was hosted by Marc Bamuthi Joseph and was pulling in 400 plus a night, the Berkeley Slam, and the earliest incarnation of Jamie DeWolf’s show Tourettes Without Regret. After that, I was hooked.
2. What have been some of your favorite and least favorite parts of being involved with the slam?
I think a lot of what I enjoy can also be things that make me not like it so much. It’s like saying it’s the poetry that I’ve enjoyed— because I have seen and watched poems and performances that make my heart ten times bigger, and then I’ve seen some work that makes all parts of my heart want to stab things. Especially the left ventricle, the left one gets real stabby. A lot of the time though, that’s just my taste and my preferences; I’m just one audience member. But so much of what gets done takes an argumentative stance, and that’s fine, but when the rhetoric is empty and you’re doing things like relying on folksy colloquialisms to make your point, c’mon, that’s Sarah Palin territory.
At the end of the day though, the good far outweighs the bad; plus, it gave me somewhere to go every week. You take that for granted. I am less alone because I had this. I’m not the type of person who enjoys what is not familiar, yet this thing forced me to go to cities I never thought I would step foot in. It forced me to not become too insular and to not live too much in my bubble. I have a difficult time around people, but this whole thing made me engage and have a sense of community and forced me to not be so damn selfish and self-centered (though those things have been a constant work). I think the best thing, though, is just some of these strange random situations I’ve been in because something involved with poetry landed me there: watching a field full of lightning bugs in the Bronx, seeing my name on a Marquee in Minneapolis, a poet bar fight against 30 Asian dudes in the North Beach area of San Francisco, parking lot dance-offs in multiple cities, and sitting in a hot springs in Big Sur buck naked with a bunch of other buck naked people.
3. Have you had any poetic mentors (either inside or outside of the slam)?
I’ve had a lot of people I can say who have given me valuable mentorship over the years when it comes to my writing, though I’ve never really had anyone who has been there for an extended period of time and has been heavily involved in my work. You just kind of take mentorship and inspiration wherever you can find it: a good conversation here and there; picking someone’s brain whenever you can get the opportunity. I think when I was younger I wasn’t taking advantage of or really listening to the mentorship I was receiving because I can be, and I was, very wrapped inside of myself and not open to receiving the help I was being given. And now that I’m in my 30s, I get more people who are just sharing ideas with you and giving you the opportunity to discuss and talk through your ideas, and that has been really helpful.
4. How has your working-class upbringing as the son of immigrants influenced your writing?
I think being the first American born child in my family and sitting right on that divide between here and the Philippines, because I don’t even know my own language, has in a way, maybe inadvertently, created a need in me to name my experience. It wasn’t any of fault of my parents, but growing up felt a lot like having to navigate this place, this America, on my own. To write became a way of coping, of trying to understand what this was. The poem helps me reframe my life, the experiences of my family, and to declare it when so much of my days are spent feeling, in this country, our experience is insignificant and easily erasable.
5. Can you speak a little about the genesis of Proletariat Bronze?
We were the only Filipinos at the time actively doing poetry slams in the Bay so we just kind of gravitated towards each other. There were several Asian American spoken word groups at that time. You had I Was Born With Two Tongues out of Chicago, Isangmahal out of Seattle, and the Bay had 8th Wonder. We thought we could start something like that and added a few more members but ultimately realized that might not have been the best idea and ended up stripping down to the three members we have today: that’s myself, Jaylee Alde, and Mesej 1.
6. What are some the joys and struggles you’ve had with working in a collaborative performance poetry group? Any advice for youngsters thinking about starting performance groups?
Well we’re not the best example for putting together a group that’s going to go out and tour and do big things. These guys are my friends, we’re family. We tried to get our stuff together so that we could do more shows throughout the year but ultimately the poetry was really just an excuse to hang out and spend time with each other more than it was the reason for being. And maybe there’s some missed opportunities there, but we did come up with some cool group pieces, got to do some great shows together and those guys have really helped shape and define who I became as a poet, and they both continue to be huge influences on my work.
7. What is Proletariat Bronze working on now?
Well Mesej 1 and his wife are having a baby, Jaylee is living in LA, and I will soon be living in Austin, Texas. So it’s safe to say that things are just kinda there. We’re always open to doing any shows if the opportunity comes along but it’s going to be harder to make things happen. It’s kinda pointless to ever say that we’ve broken up or anything like that. For the three of us, Proletariat Bronze is who we are, even if we’re not actively working.
8. You’ve spent a lot of your adult life working with homeless youth. How do you think that life experience has informed your writing?
I’ve tried to keep that part of my life separate from this other part of my life. I don’t know if it has affected me in any particular way as a writer, but it has sure as hell affected me as a person, so transitive law and all that...
9. You recently finished your MFA at St Mary’s. How was your transition from the arms of the slam community into academia?
They made it really easy. I think it was me who was more resistant if anything, especially when it came to the experimental and sound and language based work. But next thing I know, I’m trying to pull off that stuff, trying to make strange sounding sentences and saying to myself, “I don’t need to explain this shit.” It was a great time. I think I became more aware of what poetry can be and became a better reader. I developed more of a language to talk about poetry. I got to work with professors whose work is so vastly different than what I was doing. I had Brenda Hillman, Graham Foust, Matthew Zapruder, Bruce Snider, and Rusty Morrison, and these folks couldn’t be writing more different shit than I’m trying to do. And I think, because of that, they were able to help me the most. One of the things both Graham and Brenda stayed on top of me about was to not let go of where I had come from, to not reject being someone who had done poetry slams and spoken word, and I needed to hear that because you can get in your head that you want to be doing what everyone else is doing, because you think that’s how you are going to get approval. But I got to do me. In the most simplest terms.
10. What are some of your favorite poetry books that have come out in the last five years?
Humanimal by Bhanu Kapil. The writing is so immensely gorgeous. I was holding off on it at first because the title makes me think of a cheesy 80s TV show, but when I started in on it, I couldn’t put the thing down. There’s also Pink Elephant by Rachel McKibbens because I love everything she does. Face by Sherman Alexie, the guy just nails it; it’s not even fair. Chronic by DA Powell, Come on All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder, How To Seduce a White Boy in Ten Easy Steps by Laura Yes Yes... I’m probably missing some because all my books are packed up and I haven’t got through a couple of books by poets I like so I’d be frontin’ a little if I mentioned them in this list, plus there’s a whole bunch that barely missed the cut.
11. What’s next for you, Mr. Bayani? \
Just submitting work, shopping the manuscript and getting ready to make a huge move to Austin, Texas. I will also be working on getting a job, that’s probably the most important project; getting health insurance, that’s another one; and erasing all my debt, that one is huge.
1. How and when did you first get involved with the poetry slam?
I kept hearing about these Poetry Slams while I was in college at San Francisco State. Never went to one because I was running around with this crew who was doing Asian party promotions. Around this time (mid to late 90s) in San Francisco there was a bit of an artistic surge happening amongst young Filipino artists around performance and poetry and theatre and music and comedy that was inspiring as hell and I wanted to be a part of it.
The first person I’ve ever seen perform their poetry live was at this spot that used to be in Oakland called The Upper Room, and I saw Barbara Jane Reyes, who has moved on and done some pretty big things in the literary world, and it blew me away. I saw her doing her thing and it just hit me in the guts. I said, "I want to get on stage and do that ." When I graduated, I had been mostly doing theatre and felt I didn’t really have a future in acting, but I still needed something creative to do, so focusing in on spoken word seemed like the most practical and least costly way of being able feed those needs because I get to write AND perform and to do this; all I have to do is go out and drink beer. So I hit three slams within a few days of each other: Second Sundays at the now defunct Justice League in SF when it was hosted by Marc Bamuthi Joseph and was pulling in 400 plus a night, the Berkeley Slam, and the earliest incarnation of Jamie DeWolf’s show Tourettes Without Regret. After that, I was hooked.
2. What have been some of your favorite and least favorite parts of being involved with the slam?
I think a lot of what I enjoy can also be things that make me not like it so much. It’s like saying it’s the poetry that I’ve enjoyed— because I have seen and watched poems and performances that make my heart ten times bigger, and then I’ve seen some work that makes all parts of my heart want to stab things. Especially the left ventricle, the left one gets real stabby. A lot of the time though, that’s just my taste and my preferences; I’m just one audience member. But so much of what gets done takes an argumentative stance, and that’s fine, but when the rhetoric is empty and you’re doing things like relying on folksy colloquialisms to make your point, c’mon, that’s Sarah Palin territory.
At the end of the day though, the good far outweighs the bad; plus, it gave me somewhere to go every week. You take that for granted. I am less alone because I had this. I’m not the type of person who enjoys what is not familiar, yet this thing forced me to go to cities I never thought I would step foot in. It forced me to not become too insular and to not live too much in my bubble. I have a difficult time around people, but this whole thing made me engage and have a sense of community and forced me to not be so damn selfish and self-centered (though those things have been a constant work). I think the best thing, though, is just some of these strange random situations I’ve been in because something involved with poetry landed me there: watching a field full of lightning bugs in the Bronx, seeing my name on a Marquee in Minneapolis, a poet bar fight against 30 Asian dudes in the North Beach area of San Francisco, parking lot dance-offs in multiple cities, and sitting in a hot springs in Big Sur buck naked with a bunch of other buck naked people.
3. Have you had any poetic mentors (either inside or outside of the slam)?
I’ve had a lot of people I can say who have given me valuable mentorship over the years when it comes to my writing, though I’ve never really had anyone who has been there for an extended period of time and has been heavily involved in my work. You just kind of take mentorship and inspiration wherever you can find it: a good conversation here and there; picking someone’s brain whenever you can get the opportunity. I think when I was younger I wasn’t taking advantage of or really listening to the mentorship I was receiving because I can be, and I was, very wrapped inside of myself and not open to receiving the help I was being given. And now that I’m in my 30s, I get more people who are just sharing ideas with you and giving you the opportunity to discuss and talk through your ideas, and that has been really helpful.
4. How has your working-class upbringing as the son of immigrants influenced your writing?
I think being the first American born child in my family and sitting right on that divide between here and the Philippines, because I don’t even know my own language, has in a way, maybe inadvertently, created a need in me to name my experience. It wasn’t any of fault of my parents, but growing up felt a lot like having to navigate this place, this America, on my own. To write became a way of coping, of trying to understand what this was. The poem helps me reframe my life, the experiences of my family, and to declare it when so much of my days are spent feeling, in this country, our experience is insignificant and easily erasable.
5. Can you speak a little about the genesis of Proletariat Bronze?
We were the only Filipinos at the time actively doing poetry slams in the Bay so we just kind of gravitated towards each other. There were several Asian American spoken word groups at that time. You had I Was Born With Two Tongues out of Chicago, Isangmahal out of Seattle, and the Bay had 8th Wonder. We thought we could start something like that and added a few more members but ultimately realized that might not have been the best idea and ended up stripping down to the three members we have today: that’s myself, Jaylee Alde, and Mesej 1.
6. What are some the joys and struggles you’ve had with working in a collaborative performance poetry group? Any advice for youngsters thinking about starting performance groups?
Well we’re not the best example for putting together a group that’s going to go out and tour and do big things. These guys are my friends, we’re family. We tried to get our stuff together so that we could do more shows throughout the year but ultimately the poetry was really just an excuse to hang out and spend time with each other more than it was the reason for being. And maybe there’s some missed opportunities there, but we did come up with some cool group pieces, got to do some great shows together and those guys have really helped shape and define who I became as a poet, and they both continue to be huge influences on my work.
7. What is Proletariat Bronze working on now?
Well Mesej 1 and his wife are having a baby, Jaylee is living in LA, and I will soon be living in Austin, Texas. So it’s safe to say that things are just kinda there. We’re always open to doing any shows if the opportunity comes along but it’s going to be harder to make things happen. It’s kinda pointless to ever say that we’ve broken up or anything like that. For the three of us, Proletariat Bronze is who we are, even if we’re not actively working.
8. You’ve spent a lot of your adult life working with homeless youth. How do you think that life experience has informed your writing?
I’ve tried to keep that part of my life separate from this other part of my life. I don’t know if it has affected me in any particular way as a writer, but it has sure as hell affected me as a person, so transitive law and all that...
9. You recently finished your MFA at St Mary’s. How was your transition from the arms of the slam community into academia?
They made it really easy. I think it was me who was more resistant if anything, especially when it came to the experimental and sound and language based work. But next thing I know, I’m trying to pull off that stuff, trying to make strange sounding sentences and saying to myself, “I don’t need to explain this shit.” It was a great time. I think I became more aware of what poetry can be and became a better reader. I developed more of a language to talk about poetry. I got to work with professors whose work is so vastly different than what I was doing. I had Brenda Hillman, Graham Foust, Matthew Zapruder, Bruce Snider, and Rusty Morrison, and these folks couldn’t be writing more different shit than I’m trying to do. And I think, because of that, they were able to help me the most. One of the things both Graham and Brenda stayed on top of me about was to not let go of where I had come from, to not reject being someone who had done poetry slams and spoken word, and I needed to hear that because you can get in your head that you want to be doing what everyone else is doing, because you think that’s how you are going to get approval. But I got to do me. In the most simplest terms.
10. What are some of your favorite poetry books that have come out in the last five years?
Humanimal by Bhanu Kapil. The writing is so immensely gorgeous. I was holding off on it at first because the title makes me think of a cheesy 80s TV show, but when I started in on it, I couldn’t put the thing down. There’s also Pink Elephant by Rachel McKibbens because I love everything she does. Face by Sherman Alexie, the guy just nails it; it’s not even fair. Chronic by DA Powell, Come on All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder, How To Seduce a White Boy in Ten Easy Steps by Laura Yes Yes... I’m probably missing some because all my books are packed up and I haven’t got through a couple of books by poets I like so I’d be frontin’ a little if I mentioned them in this list, plus there’s a whole bunch that barely missed the cut.
11. What’s next for you, Mr. Bayani? \
Just submitting work, shopping the manuscript and getting ready to make a huge move to Austin, Texas. I will also be working on getting a job, that’s probably the most important project; getting health insurance, that’s another one; and erasing all my debt, that one is huge.
JASON BAYANI is a recent graduate of Saint Mary’s MFA program. He is a Kundiman fellow and a highly regarded veteran of the National Poetry Slam scene. Jason has worked with homeless youth for most of his adult life and is now working and seeking work as a college professor. His work has been published in Maganda Magazine, the 2005 National Poetry Slam anthology, Seventeen Hills, and Write Bloody’s classroom anthology, Learn Then Burn. He has been on 7 National Poetry Slam teams and is the 2010 IWPS representative for Oakland. He is also Literary Death Match’s 100th episode winner. He performs regularly around the Bay Area and sometimes outside of it.