Bent Mentor Showcase 2005: Featuring Buddy Wakefield & Juba Kalamka
The queers are here – again! For the fourth time in two years, Bent Writing Institute brings queer voices to the Seattle stage at Broadway Performance Hall. Over two nights, Bent will command the mic – featuring two renowned queer writing mentors Buddy Wakefield (co-founder of the Bullhorn Collective) on Friday 10/7/05, and Jumba Kalamka (founding member of Deep Dickollective) on Saturday 10/8/05 (see bios by clicking 'continue reading' below). Both nights, Bent will showcase Tara Hardy (director of Bent) and over 40 students, from emerging writers to seasoned local poets. Plus, on Sunday, 10/9/05, Buddy and Juba will lead limited-seating writing workshops for all levels of writers in the community. Read poet bio's here.
Who: Bent Writing Institute
featuring Buddy Wakefield, Juba Kalamka, Tara Hardy, and Bent students
What: Mentor Showcase 2005
When: Friday, October 7, doors at 7:30PM, show at 8PM, featuring Buddy Wakefield
Saturday, October 8, doors at 7:30PM, show at 8PM, featuring Juba Kalamka
Sunday, October 9, writing workshops led by Buddy (12-1:30PM) and Juba (1:30-3PM)
Where: Showcase: Broadway Performance Hall, 1625 Broadway, on Capitol Hill at Broadway & Pine
Workshops: LGBT Center, on Capitol Hill on Pike (between 11th and 12th Avenues)
How: Showcase tickets: Advance purchase from Bent students or contact info@bentwriting.com
For one night, $10 advance purchase and $12 day of show
For two nights, $18 advance purchase and $24 day of show
Workshop tickets: Advance registration (recommended) at info@bentwriting.com
For one session, $15; for two sessions, $20
JUBA KALAMKA: A recording artist since 1988, Chicago native Juba Kalamka (a.k.a. Pointfivefag) is most recognized for his recent work as a founding member of "homohop" crew Deep Dickollective (D/DC) and his development of the label Sugartruck Recordings. Through Sugartruck, Kalamka has coordinated the release and promotion of four critically successful D/DC albums. Noted for his dialogues on the convergences and conflicts of race, identity, sexuality and class in pop culture, Kalamka has written and illustrated articles for Kitchen Sink, Colorlines, and the now-defunct bisexual issues magazine Anything That Moves. Additionally, he has been a speaker, panelist, and curator for numerous organizations and conferences, among them the San Francisco Black Gay/Lesbian Film Festival, and GLAAD. Recently, Kalamka was chosen to be one of six plenary speakers at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's 2005 Creating Change conference. He also makes love to the camera in Good Vibrations' "G Marks the Spot", "Orgasm: Faces of Ecstasy", and "Radio Dildo Libre.” His second solo recording, "Ooogabooga Under Fascism,” and Deep Dickollective's fifth disc, "On Some Other,” will be released on Sugartruck in late 2005. Jumba lives in Oakland, working for the Applied Research Center, working on his MFA, and living with his primary partner, their daughter, and a lovemongering cat. For more information, go to: www.jubakalamka.com.
BUDDY WAKEFIELD: Buddy Wakefield is the 2004 and 2005 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion. Born in Louisiana, raised in Texas, and now home in Seattle, Wakefield has been a busker in Amsterdam, a lumberjack in Norway, a street vendor in Spain, a team leader in Singapore, a re-delivery boy, a candy maker, a street sweeper, a bartender, a maid, a construction worker, manager of a CD store, a bull rider, and a booking agent. In the spring of 2001 Buddy left his job, sold all he owned, and moved into the small, mobile town of Honda Civic to tour every major poetry venue in America and Canada through August of 2003. He is currently landed in Seattle as the manager and co-founder of The Bullhorn Collective (an agency made up of 30 of the highest ranking Slam Poets and most accomplished performance poets in the world). Buddy has been featured on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, NPR and the BBC. Wakefield is also the 2003 Seattle Poetry Grand Slam Champion, 2002 Long Beach Grand Slam Champ, and was voted Favorite Poet at the 2002 Midwest Poet's Choice Awards as well as Best Featured Slam Poet 2001-03, Arizona. Buddy, a Board of Directors member with Youth Speaks Seattle, is known for delivering raw, rounded, high vibration performances of humor and heart while shifting social paradigms and assaulting cross-cultural barriers through powerful accounts of release. For more information, go to: www.buddywakefield.com.
TARA HARDY: Tara Hardy is the femme dyke working class Seattle Poet Populist and 2002 Seattle Poetry Grand Slam champion. She is the founder and director of Bent, the Seattle queer writers institute (“Bent”) where she has been teaching and mentoring queer artists for over four years. She has been seen on “The Rolling Thunder Democracy Tour,” “Strombolis Island of Donkeys and Dolls Tour,” the “All Girl, All Word Tour,” and can be found in Without a Net out on Seal Press.