Hello everyone, it's your host, Amanda Eka, and I have some amazing news. Starting this fall, The Poet Speaks is coming to your TV screens.
Yes, that's right.
After eight amazing seasons as a podcast, poet Speaks with Amanda Eka is now a TV show, airing out the Archaeology Channel's new streaming service, Heritage. Everyone, get ready for a visual feast, spoken word performances, and deep dives into the minds of poets from all over the world. Now, something extraordinary is coming and you won't want to miss a single moment. Stay tuned. Hello everyone, and welcome back
to the Poet Speaks Podcast. Now, our next guest is a spoken word pioneer, having won the Newerkan Poets Cafe Grand Slam, Who's a featured poet at the twenty twenty two Whitney Biennial and received the two thousand and six Writers for Writers Award from Poets and Writers. He's a teaching artist at the Kennedy Center for the Arts and is one of the inaugural recipients of the twenty twenty three James Baldwin Fellowship from the Mason Baldwin Paris, France.
His work appears in over thirty anthologies, and he has shared the stage with Patti Smith, Alan Ginsburg and through Howard Zen's Portraits projects, and NYU has performed Stanley Tucci, Jesse Eisenberg and Loupe Fiasco. Everybody, please, welcome to the podcast. Reggie Cabico, Reggie, how are you?
I'm great, Hello, Amanda. I'm excited to be here.
Absolutely now, and I got excited just reading your bio. My goodness, you are a legend in the game. I mean that is amazing the things you've done and where you came from and then where you're at now. So first and foremost, tell us where are we speaking up to you from today? What beautiful part of this beautiful world?
Right?
I'm coming to you live from Washington, DC, d C, d C.
So, Reggie, tell me were you born and bred in d C? Or is there are you a transplant? As an don't tell me a little bit about your background.
Where did you grow up? Yeah?
Well, I'm the child of Filipino immigrants born in Baltimore, Maryland, and my family, you know, moved to southern Maryland, so you know, twenty minutes outside of DC.
Actually where I grew up in Clinton, Maryland.
Is where after John Wilksbooth assassinated Abraham Lincoln, he hid in a tavern in my in my little hometown of Clinton, Maryland. So there are lots of gross Cornfield's tobacco, very redneck and African American. And then just the beginning of Filipinos,
you know, that were in Clinton, Maryland. So I did not grow up with a lot of Filipino representation growing up, and so I think as a poet, I think that really informed my writing because I wanted to really talk about being the child of immigrants and the Filipino American experience.
So some of that's in my poetry.
Absolutely. Tell me a bit about that idea. What you know, the immigrant story is something that's very It hits home for a lot of people, right, And I think even as someone I'm a child of immigrants too, I think to even be in the field of whether it be the arts, writing media, that's usually not the first thing.
Maybe your parents had an idea for you to grow up and this is how you be and this is what you choose as a living, right, tell me a bit about how was your family very supportive of your career as a poet, as a writer.
It wasn't as a writer. It was really as a performer. I was reciting stories when I was three years old. I would memorize them and like sort of live in the trance of speaking. So even if they weren't supportive, they really couldn't stop me anyway, because I was all ways, you know, memorizing stories and reciting them. And you know, I think that that was the beginning.
Of spoken word.
Listening to records, record players, Yeah, that's how long ago. It was little forty five, forty five records that told you fairy tales and Disney stories and reciting that all of that is poetry. Listening to the Wizard of Oz, all of that just has hyperbole and imagery and creatures. So I think that that was my introduction to spoken words. So in answer to the question, I think my family knew that that that's what I was going to be.
An entertainer actually a performer.
And then I would probably say an entertainer as well, because you know.
I look at poetry.
Yeah, I look at poetry as a way of entertaining and finding that that poe try is theatrical and it can be funny, and it can be serious and so I sort of look at poems from that perspective.
But you know, I write poems in.
Order to perform, so I think that that is the vehicle for me. I don't write songs, I don't play the guitar, but I have my poems and that's like a pocket full of stories if you will.
Yeah.
Absolutely, What tell me when did the kind of a poetry bug? When did that actually hit you though? Was it did it find you or did you find it? Was it in childhood, young adulthood? When did you actually kind of lift it up and take it?
That's a good question, thanks, Amanda. I found poetry after college. Like truthfully, you were looking at the nineteen nineties and the term multiculturalism, which is I think such a nineties dated word. That was the beginning of multicultural So by that, I mean if you walked into a bookstore, you would see Asian and American anthologies, LATINX anthologies, African American anthologies, Erotic Asian anthologies.
And so in the very beginning of.
The nineties, as a poet, there was a space for me.
And I remember one of the.
Books I was anthologizing is an Asian American Erotica anthology called on a Bed of Rice.
You believe that title On a bed of rice that would not float today, on a bed of rice, And there was like a half naked Asian woman and you could see like a nippo outline, and.
I'm just like, I'm a bed of rice.
Really, back to the nineties, things weren't as triggering. Yeah, and you were just happy to have a book. I was happy to be in a book. Right, I'm just happy to be seen or heard as Filipinos because we're not on the mainstream. And so going back to being a child of immigrant, you have parents that are like, you have to make succeed, you have to do this, you know, stay in school. You're going to be like
a doctor or a lawyer or something like that. Right, it's not going to be like yes, and you're going to be a poet ranchie.
So yeah, going.
Back to that, I think people are afraid of poetry, and certainly in the Philippines, poetry is such a antiquated oral tradition. It's more like debate, debate and rhythmic skills called balik tassan. So that's the kind of oral performance. But I don't even think my parents knew any of that anyway, or even what poetry was, or even if they even read books, right, or even if they read a newspaper. Right. My parents were busy trying to trying to work. And I have a mom he's a Filipino nurse,
and dads from the Navy. So but certainly getting my experience out there is probably the reason why I am a poet. I think because being a child of immigrants, you're always invisible in the background, and you're having to translate, and you live in two worlds. You're never fully Filipino, you're never fully American, you're only Filipino American. Yes, it's you know, you could look at that as a power, or you could look at that as being an outcast.
And sometimes there's a power in being the outsider, and there's a power, there's a power by being able to move as a float back and forth sometimes between worlds.
Absolutely, now I completely agree with you the idea of the in between generation.
Almost.
I feel like, like I remember there was some research I did. It's like called generation one point five. You're not quite fully American, but you're also not quite from your motherland, right, so you being Filipino American, you're kind of a dual, dual reality that you've been living in or at home, you're probably one way, then outside you act a different way, but you still have those kind
of thoughts. How much, like you said, like that you feel like that's a superpower for your writing, especially could you maybe expand more on that.
It's a superpower because you are taking your experience and you're sending it out and really depicting what that other world is like and what those and you're reporting on those stories, and it's not the same old little house of the prairie shit that you're going to be hearing or that you've heard all the time. So I think
that it is a superpower. And it's also that I'm sure childhood immigrants might even share my stories, and that you're also disconnected from your parents' homelands and disconnected culturally and sometimes to the language. So there is that disconnect.
And it's also that the ancestors that you have, like we don't even have the like some of us do not have the privilege of ancestry, right, And then people could say, well, I'm related to so and so, and I can't really say that I'm related to Queen Elizabeth, Right, but I'm like, well, I'm descended from indigenous farm workers, right.
Like, who is that?
Right? So you really do feel disconnected, not just from that outside American or other world, also disconnected from lineage and history, and so there is a disconnect. And so I think your whole life, you're just trying to connect. And so poetry becomes this vital vehicle in order to connect with other people.
Absolutely, absolutely, you know, now kind of you know, we've heard a little bit about your just background, your head. Now let's kind of dive into your illustrious career. I want to ask you. I'm going to make you blush a little bit. But you're described as a spoken word pioneer. I mean, those are such fighting words, those are such heavy words. The gravity of being able having that said about you, I mean, what is it meant to you?
I mean, just being given this title as people describe you as a pioneer in your field.
Wow, thank you for that question. Being a pioneer means that I started. I was at the very beginning of the movement, which is the poetry Slam.
So my first.
Time reading around at the Eurekan Poet's Cafe was around nineteen ninety three, and so at that point, the poetry slam, which is an American art form. It's the competitive art of performance poetry. A poet reads a poem without costume, music or perhaps and you get scored zero to ten,
like the Olympics. So in this form, you're creating a three minute texts poetic texts, monologue stories within three minutes, and you're really trying to captivate an audience with just words and your voice and your physicality and your stage presence. So for me, that was the art form that I became someone who defined what that would be. And so when I was ready to hit the New Rekan poet's cafe, there were a few people who memorized their poems, but
I did not have a literary background. So when I was performing my poems, I would memorize the poems and I would look at them as you know, little short monologues that you would audition for for as an actor or even a Broadway showstopper without music. So I really when I started to perform, I was the first openly queer and Filipino a poet who really.
Succeeded in the forum.
And so I later won the ne Eurekan Poet's Cafe Grand Slam Champion and at that.
Point MTV what they were recording thirty.
Minute poetry videos that I was able to have that recorded, and then I was on tour with Lallapalooza with the Beastie Boys and Smashing Pumpkins and George Clinton. Immediately I was thrown into a spotlight, not knowing what this world was, of what spoken word poetry, performance poetry, slam poetry was, but I was actually doing it and I was succeeding
in that art form. So I just think it's important because spoken word poetry is ephemeral, and when I was performing, there was no YouTube at the time, and so there was no way to record footage from nineteen ninety three in the way that you have it. And if you don't put yourself out there, every young twenty year old is going to say they invented it, they started it. I do think it's important for especially the slam poets in the nineties to really archive and to remember where
this all evolved and where this came from. And it's hard to say whether slam poetry is going to have its own literary are name like you have beats, the beats, And then I remember when I was, you know, reading at the Eurekan Poet's Cafe, New York Magazine said the beats are back, and I think all of us that we're performing at the time just really hated the comparison, like, we are not the beats, We're not white people in
a cafe with Bob Dylan. It's just not that. And slam poets, like beat poetry would be really long and elongated, and slam poets are very terse and it's only three minutes. So a lot of differences. But really they should say that indigenous people are back, or people of color are back, or queer people are back, because the people who succeeded in the poetry slam were bipoc poets and queer poets because they were speaking a kind of truth that is
not heard. And to be openly clear in the nineties was a heroic, courageous act because there are a lot of poets who were closeted, and so to say that you're openly queer about them was a huge deal.
Yeah, no, absolutely, I'm so curious. I mean, you know, being able to spread the word, like you said, as openly queer that that in itself is such an act of bravery, especially at that time period. But I also kind of want to dig into what does that even feel like? You know, did you how old were you when kind of that MTV the really thing started going into a whirlwind for your career?
How old were you?
I mean? And at that point these things are all happening at once. I mean, where is your mind even at Can you even process fully what was going on?
I could not process what the fuck was going on. I had no idea because it was just I read a poem and then I get a standing ovation, and then I win something, and then I'm going on tour and I'm.
Just not used to that.
And like, I knew that after that, I'd have to get better as a writer.
I knew that.
I just I had to back it up right and I had to develop. I had to learn, and I had to be a better writer. But it did open the doors for me to also do theater work and
performance work and solo shows at the same time. So I really developed a lot during that time, and I was you know, it was right after college, and it came at a good time because I just wanted to give up as an actor because I wasn't Asian enough or the type of I have, the look that was not quite what casting directors were thinking of for ahent
let alone. There were no Filipino parts. So having poetry there meant that I had artistic control and I wasn't dependent upon a casting director to cast me to do something.
So no, absolutely speak a little bit more on that. How kind of especially as a writer as a poet, like you said, you weren't dependent on that casting agent. You're kind of the captain of your own ship in a lot of ways. How important do you think that is as a poet. You know, a lot of people
question getting with a publisher. You know, obviously you know you've gotten such a marry out of ways with media like MTV going on tour, people Beastie Boys performing with you know, Lupe Fiasco, kind of those very unique collaborations. What do you think as a poet, what is your advice to other people that listen to this show kind of you know, casting their net why, but also still remaining control of where their art lives. What is your opinion on that?
Yeah, that is a great question, because nobody is going to make you a poet. You make yourself a poet, right, And what I would say to young, young poets who are starting is that if you're a poet, everyone should know.
That you're a poet.
Yeah, everyone in your building should know. Hi, I'm Reggie, I'm your neighbor. I'm a poet. I'm doing a reading down here.
I think if you.
Are a poet, start your own reading series. You can start your own online publication, you could start your own podcast or series. I think things have changed. You can be a poet.
On Instagram, Like, that's just it right.
I want to go back because I've been thinking Amanda about you know, the term street poetry street poets, because it also seems like dated title, but street poetry and it's now getting another resurgence.
And if you're looking up street.
Poetry, that is like people in Australia putting stickers of poems on the street. It could also mean people on the street reading poems. I'm selling books on the street, So what does that really mean. I think street poetry is a way of how do you get yourself out there? And I think, you know, street poetry might be with like I am a social media poet, and I don't
think that makes you any less of a poet. I think that, you know, people who publish poetry actively are going to look at the content or the craft or the skill of the poement say this is not quite there, but it doesn't really matter because poetry has no rules. And so you know, people think that you have to get an MFA and to be a poet, but the MFA doesn't make you a poet.
MFA just means.
That you sat around a table cutting up and reading everyone else's poems and you connected with a few mentors who are you know, who are hopefully positive of your work. I also know a lot of teachers who just want to destroy students, and as an educator, because I am an educator, also, I really don't believe in destroying people are making people feel bad. Like if you're if you're going to mentor or teach poetry, people should leave your class,
your workshop wanting to write poetry, not feeling bad. You take a singing class, you should leave singing, and you know singing high notes.
Properly, right. So I think.
That's something that I learned later in life, is that everyone has a poem. And I also have this passion and gift for making sure that people can write their poem and share it. And I think that it goes back to my childhood immigrant roots because things were never said and I want I want truth in a space When I do poetry. It should be truth in a space and people listening and people dreaming together when they listen to a poem. That there's a dreaming that happens.
Absolutely, now, that's beautiful, and dreaming that happens when people listen to poetry, absolutely, you know, And again I kind of want to reckon back to this idea, the gravity of you know, the effect that you've had as a you know, you've published what more than thirty anthologies again, you know you've sort of pioneer, right, a trailblazer one
multiple Grand slams. What kind of you know, looking back from your career from where it started in poetry to where it is now, I mean, did you ever imagine that you'd be at this breath of really just absolutely top of your class, right, one of the best in your field. Did you ever imagine that this would be your trajectory as a poet?
No?
Absolutely not, absolutely not. You have no idea where poetry is going to take you. And that's sort of the beauty of being a poet. Like the next thing in the email, you might get a text from Amanda. You can say, hey, will you do this podcast or will you be able to do this?
So like you don't know.
Who you're going to connect with, right, Yeah, you have no idea, you know. I think as a poet, you write a poem, it gets published, people will read it or they'll see your performance, and you don't know who's reading it. Yeah, It's almost like putting a message in a bottle, throwing it into the ocean, and you have no idea who is a much bread, who is teaching your poem? And I think in everything that you're saying, being the top of a genre or a field is
not really what I'm proud most proud about. I think I'm most proud about doing it since doing it for at least thirty one years, right, and sticking to something for thirty one years and trying to get better at it and discovering more. And I think I'm more proud of being an active poet and growing more than the whole than the title.
I think that that.
To be able to make discoveries and to keep writing poems for three years, writing and performing poems for thirty one years actively, I think, I think that for anyone.
That's a commitment.
And I know that there are poets who who may not have been as published enough or may not have received the kind of accolades I have. But anyone who sticks with something for so long is just it deserves, like living alone for thirty years doing poetry and making your money off of it. Now, even that, like you know, it's it's the business that finds you to give up. And there are times where I'm like, well, I am not going to pay the rents, so I'm going to apply it.
To be I'm going to apply to work at this bakery.
Right, So I come close to applying, something else happens and I am able to survive.
So yeah, thank you for asking. And I'm just.
Blessed and humble that I suppose you got to stay healthy and live long. Yeah, live long, stay healthy, exercise, eat your vegetables.
Yes for sure, Yes, yes, sir, absolutely, it's that idea.
Like I love what you said.
It's not even the culmination of your achievement that's meant the most. It's the climb, and it's the person you became as you climb to reach those goals, and it's the constant always knowing. I just love to grow and I'm going to continue to grow in every aspect.
Yeah, I'll tell you a little secret, because I grew up Catholic, and I really, I really thought I might be a priest, and so I was like when I was in fifth grade, it was like it was all Catholic schools.
So like I was into Catholicism.
I don't practice it actively as much now, but I say that because I think that poetry is it is religion, it is spirituality, it is shamanistic and you are giving lights, you are giving hope, you are trying to tell people, you're giving them what it is to live in the human condition. And you're trying to give people a way to exist or a way to hang on, or a way to inspire or to see what is happening right now,
because there's so much unprecedented shit that happens. So poets name it and that they speak it and that they release this prayer or this spell. Poetry is a spell, and so to me, that's another component and another component about by and I don't stop being a poet because it is a daily practice.
You have to look at the world on a.
Daily basis and make continual observations, remembering and recording and processing all of that and making connections. So really the poem is a bridge to the world and to people. And as a child of immigrants, we're always trying to find a bridge. We are almost bridgeless, and we are building our own bridges. I'm starting an Asian mentorship a poet program in Washington, d C. With an organization day eight and the project is called Heart of My Home,
Home that I Built. I'm paraphracing, but in terms of doing a portfolio with Asian American poets in DC, Home that I Built, I feel like Amanda, you and I we've had to build our homes right, and build home means you brought that. So so that's that's that's important.
Absolutely now, that idea of home and what that means to so many different people. Now, thank you so much for sharing that, Reggie, and just speaking of you know, poetry and building and creating new connections. Reggie is featured on the new show Streaming on the Archaeology Channels new streaming service heritage called The Post Speaks with Amanda Eke. So yours truly, Reggie, you were in the episode spoken.
We're in the village.
By the time folks here this podcast, the episode will be streaming everywhere. Yes, Yes, tell us a little bit about your experience being on The Post Speaks with Amanda Eke. Tell us a little bit about the day for filming and the work that you did in the poem.
Well, it was a phenomenal experience, and I want to say it's.
It's it's it's great to get television credits and it's rare, and it's great to be archived, especially you know, post pandemic or in this timeframe, not that the pandemic and not the COVID's over, but to be able to enter and to film, to go back to my roots in New York City, and to be.
At Poet's house and to be reconnected in person. Although my work was virtual, it was so energizing to perform there and also to to meet Thomas Volclaro, who is also recording in this episode with the village, to really just.
Reflect also.
What the influence and the multiplicity of voices that informed my work was just also was also emotional, and it was just an exciting day. And it was really really hot, but not as hot as like recording up a streat platform.
So thank you, I've got that.
We were like a little bit little breeze, yeah, a little.
Bit of tree shade. Yeah, So that was it was. It was a jubilation and we got it done. We was snappy and we got it. We we moved it.
Yeah, we did that. Yeah, folks check it out.
Uh.
Reggie is featured on the spoken Word in the Village episode. We're looking at oral traditions and how the village Grantedge Village has influenced a lot of New York poets. So he performs a very very powerful piece and has some very powerful words to say for the episode. For the poet speaks with Amanda Ecka, streaming on the Archaeology Channels
new streaming service Heritage Links will be down below. So big thank you to Reggie for not only being on the podcast, but also being on the Now the TV show. So we're I'm so excited and he did such a phenomenal job.
Oh, Amanda, I gotta plug my book. It's called Rabbit in Search of a Rolex. Day eight so if you look it up online on Day eight website, you can buy the book and check it out.
A Rabbit in search of a Rolex. I'm wondering where does that title come from. That is a pretty specific title.
It's a line from one of the poems. And the book is just a series of meditations. It is a spiritual meditation. And I was thinking of the word hammock and what it feels like to be in a hammock. And I would just close my eyes and I would like drink wine, have an edible, and the words just came out, I have fallen in the universus hammock. I listened to the trees walk and skip around me. I am the white rabbit in search of a Rolex. I feel the kindness of dice rolled around my knees. So
those words were the spiritual meditation. That was the truth, the journey, the magic, the way that you can fall into the universe and open yourself up. So and that's a rapit in search of a Rolex. I use that with my students. A robot in search of a heart, a cucumber in search of yogurts, a pencil in search of a path, like you can just keep going with that.
So, yeah, absolutely beautiful. Reggie's that will be the link down below no matter where you're listening to this podcast, So everyone go check that out.
That sounds amazing.
And Reggie, last question for you. We ask every poet on the Pope Speaks podcast, Reggie Cabigo, why do you need to get your words out?
I got to get words out because I need to connect. I need to connect. And I've grown up feeling disconnected, and I grew up in a dysfunctional place and the only way to heal from trauma is to connect by being yourself. And I think it's just it's simple. And I hope I speak my words because I hope that someone listening will also share their story and their words.
Absolutely all right, he needs to connect everyone, all right, Reggie, We appreciate you being guessed. Now our final final question before we let you go, please tell the folks what's next for you in twenty twenty four, any event, and then tell us where can we find you socials website and all that good stuff.
Oh, thank you.
Check out a Gathering of the Tribes. It is an organization where I'm executive director. We do a lot of poetry. Literary programs on the Roots are originally in the village and please check that out and you will see what I'm doing. I'm working now that I'm working more in New York. I'm looking to do my theater performance. I hope to be connected with the New York video futurists again. And I look for my next book.
It took me.
It took me about thirty years to do this book. It's not going to take another thirty years from our next one, so very soon. I hope to have a longer, full length Absolutely, where can.
We find you for socials website all that good stuff.
Yeah, Instagram, Reggie Guy, that's our e g I e g u y and then Reggie Kubiko on Facebook. There are other Regi Kibikos. Look for the cute one there we go.
Yeah, look at you, Yeah, yeah, look for the key well please all right, Reggie, thank you so much for being a guest on the Folk Speak podcast. Everyone. Reggie's links will be down below in the description box. No matter what platform you're listening to this podcast song, look for the links in the description box below. All right, Reggie, thank you so much for being a guest today. On the Post Speaks podcast. Absolutely all right again everyone. Check
out off Reggie's amazing work. Check out the Post Speaks podcast no matter where you listen to podcast, all right, by bye everyone,