tony gallucci ~ The Infamous Poetry Interview

Thanks to my good friend Thom the World Poet i got hooked up with the EXSE Spoken Word Showcase at channelAustin last week to do a TV show. I went down to Austin for the show and then something very weird happened.

Here's some backstory. In the summer of 2001 i was contacted by Russell Simmons to be on his show HBO's DefPoetryJam. I had been at the National Poetry Slam a couple years prior and had some national exposure through some documentary pieces on MTV, NBC, and the Texas Country Reporter franchise, and was at least a fringe part of the national slam scene of the day.

Well, 9/11 hit shortly after the invite and everything got shelved. I'm not a TV watcher so i don't know much about it, but as i recall the show was off for months. In any case i was never rebooked and i didn't pursue it.

Nevertheless it was an honor to be considered, and so i use that on my resume/press bio, where i state that i have appeared on a series of shows and "was invited to perform on HBO's DefPoetryJam."

So fast forward to show night. I walk in the door at the studios and am soon met by the producer Karla, who leads me to a conference room, where i am introduced to Selah, the show's host. She says they are excited to see me, says they have a special interview planned in addition to my reading and she would like to talk about a few things so that she doesn't go into the interview blind. We talk about my poetry -- which i have selected somewhat around the theme of how lies and truth are inextricably intertwined in our lives, how there should probably be some other word for the fictions we create for ourselves and to save others' feelings, that the harshness of the word "lie" should be reserved for things said in spite, greed, or other nefarious scenarios. She gets it.

And i have to say she was wonderfully nice, very intelligent, very confident, sure of herself, and also attuned to trying to be on top of things. I was impressed.

She was also intrigued by the slam process -- which is a kind of literature meets WWF meets olympic ice dancing kind of competition. I explained there are city competitions, which crown city winners and teams and send them off to the annual National Slam. And from which came, as a brilliant offshoot, the Holy Grail of DefPoetryJam.

And so we headed there. She asked me how it was that i got invited, and i explained that i didn't really know, simply got a phone call from Simmons, and then i laid out the whole sordid story to her, in quite some detail, about 9/11 and how it stole my chance to be on the show etc. Then the producer came in and said it was time.

So off we went to the studio. We got a countdown and lights. And then she says they wanted to welcome me to EXSE and were especially honored to have with them today someone who had performed on the stage at HBO's DefPoetryJam.

WTF?

I think you'll see in the video here that I was dumbstruck.

She then turned to me and said something like "So what was it like?"

And, on the fly, i just played along: got swept up in the confusion, the misunderstanding, the LIE, and said something along the lines of "it was great".

We were on live TV and i wasn't about to embarrass her in front of that audience. I still don't want to. Am loathe to. That was the whole point of my performance.

I immediately started trying to shift attention away from that, focusing on things like doing a reading at a university with an audience full of academics. But she didn't bite. Finally she glazed over when i started talking aobut my poetry being about lies and soon we cut to set up for the rest of the show.

Then i read.

It was over finally, and i was abundantly cordial and thankful, and then i walked out into the east Austin air and started finding people i knew to tell the story -- coverage i suppose, an alibi. So i told a Ph.D. from UCLA, in town to see me about bug work, told a retired Austin cop friend, and a friend who's a state criminal appeals judge. They all told me not to worry about it, to let it lie (ha!), that no one watches poetry on TV anyway.

And granted the live show was over, but i kept thinking about that thing being in rotation over and over for the next year. I got back home and told another dozen people, none of whom seemed to think i ought to call up and come clean. So i didn't, haven't, not yet at least. I'm still mulling it over. And i thought by writing this i might cover myself for those people who might have seen the show and come looking for more info on the blog.

And so i'm apologizing here, and also trying to escape embarrassing that wonderful lady at channelAustin. And realizing that there will probably be some intersection here, and i don't want to deal with it. And i just hope someone understands.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• poetry
• poem
• slam
• interview
• tony
• gallucci
• milkriverfilm

[milkriverfilm]

omggg! busted i guess . . . although i thought you already knew when i saw you at the last austin slam in sept!?! YOU are so kind . . .

tg

[Taishudo]

Tony, you pretty much had no choice but to play along, kudos to you for doing this and setting the record straight. :) Peace and love.

[tigerandthelamb]

Never come clean!

[EXSESpokenWord]

At least it's all out in the clear...sorry...

:-)

Karla

Producer

EXSE Spokenword Showcase

[SelahVSelah]

OMG! If you told me that you didnt get a chance to go on the show I am terribly sorry because i didnt catch it. At that point we had been recording the show for 10 hours and I had been up since the butt crack of dawn, I may have been nodding my head but completly in la la land. I was just going off of my notes, and going through the motions. We weren't on live t.v.! You should have stopped me! So so so so so sorry! You are a very kind, and talented man.