As far as successful slams go, the March Poetry Slam at the Music Club did not disappoint. Christian Drake is a six-time National Poetry Slam team member and has performed on three National Poetry Slam Finals stages. After gracing us during his feature set of nature-laced, and baritone comedy, Drake conducted his Saturday Brunch workshop at the Palace theatre about the tool of poetic justice.
After two open-mic performances and a crowd-pleasing sacrifice by the legendary Tomy Buick, we kicked reveled in the talent 12 of 14 poets who signed up to slam. Coming in third place was Ted O, in second place Dana “I.D.” Matthews and first being taken from Burlington’s very own Dan AKA Dan Murray AKA Dan. A noteable details of the night including Dana losing his ID; sadly, Mr. Matthews will be migrating to Vancouver to pursue his love of rap and spoken word poetry. To all members of the London arts community and LPS, we wish you the best of all possible worlds; come back soon!
Christian Drake
Originally and currently from New England, Christian Drake was previously a host of popular slams, poetry shows and burlesques in San Francisco, CA and Albuquerque, NM. His poetry has been performed on at least three continents and covered by hundreds of high school forensics students, and he himself has performed in over sixty cities in the U.S. and Canada. He has never appeared on HBO, but has been featured on Al Jazeera.
Christian’s earned his reputation in the slam world by combining finely-crafted poetry with wild, rock-and-roll-inspired performance. A poet of outstanding variety, his repertoire includes poetry about heartbreak, music formats, war, nature, pornography, immigration, gardening, mythology, love, and the relative merits of period sex. He’s best known for his often loud, erotic, and political nature poetry; currently a science teacher in the New England wilderness, his work as an
aquarium naturalist, planetarium guide, urban forester and park ranger has influenced his craft. The effect is, to quote one audience member, ‘like nature poetry filtered through a guitar amp.
