CR 033: Buddy Wakefield on Poetry, Clichés, and Trying to Live for a Living
The award-winning actor, writer, producer, and poet discusses his impressive career and singular performance style.
In 2001, Buddy Wakefield did what nearly everyone dreams of doing: he left his job, got rid of his possessions, and set out to “live for a living.” It was a risk, but one that paid off. In the ensuing years, he has been featured on NPR, the BBC, and HBO’s Def Poetry Jam; toured with Sage Francis and Ani DiFranco; won the Individual World Poetry Slam Championship two years in a row; published multiple books of prose and poetry; released four albums; and, thanks to his relentless touring schedule, earned the title of “most toured performance poet in history.”
Though most people might not think of live poetry as a laugh-out-loud affair, Wakefield’s performances are an amalgam of thought-provoking writing and gut-busting comedy, something he admits was intentional. “I hate reading poetry,” he says. “And I had it in my head that poetry wasn’t enough, because I knew how bored I was with it. Therefore, it had to be something fun on stage. And while I knew I was fun and I knew the writing had impact, I also felt like I needed to be more. But I never wanted to bill myself as a comedian because that’s just too much pressure. That’s just people staring at you, expecting you to make them laugh, when in poetry, they’re expecting you to make them bored. And if I can make them laugh, then I accomplished the impossible.”
Today, Wakefield lives in Porto, Portugal, where he’s completing an audiobook of his 2019 release, A Choir of Honest Killers; working on a new book of poetry; and facilitating online workshops for writers and performers. (His three-week spoken word performance workshop, “Don’t Fake Cry,” begins on March 2.) I recently spoke with him over Zoom about the evolution of spoken word, his advice to fellow writers, and his desire to appreciate the little things.
SANDRA EBEJER: When you think back to those early days when you gave away everything in order to live your dream, what comes to mind?
BUDDY WAKEFIELD: That I should have gotten a van instead of a Honda Civic. [Laughs] That’s the first thing that comes to mind. My being too dumb to know better, my sheer audacity, is the reason I lived my dream. It was not a smart decision. I mean, it paid off, but looking back, I can’t believe I risked what I risked. I was just such a— If there’s a positive form of narcissist, I think that’s what I was.
I watched the video for Farmly. Your upbringing isn’t one that would typically lead to a passion for or career in poetry.
Well, I think when one grows up gay in Texas and spends a lifetime trying to leave their body and finding out the trick is that you have to stay in it, then one has to find a narrative to try and exist in some sort of manner that’s happy, as opposed to pretending that the narrative provided for them is making them happy anymore. So basically, what I’m saying is, if I hadn’t been born gay, I’d be a total douche.
So where did your love for poetry and writing begin?
I was a pretty sweet kid with a good heart and a lot of anger. I didn’t take the anger out on other people; I took it out on myself. And so I think writing came naturally to me as a place, as a retreat, and no one ever made me do it. I started when I was really young, and it was just a way to process myself before I was able to label it. It was just somewhere to get it all out of my body.
When you decided as a young adult that you were going to pursue this path, what did the people in your life, those closest to you, think or say? Were they supportive?
I think so. Nobody was discouraging me from it. Mom encouraged me to go for my dreams, in a general sense. I remember reading her a poem I wrote during my Tom Waits phase, and I was so stoked on it. It was called “Marbles in the Trees.” I finished reading it, and she said, really matter of factly and honestly, “Oh. Yeah. That’s more your kind of thing.” [Laughs] It was a very Southern “bless your heart” kind of response. And so I realized I was going to have to seek out different audiences for the attention I was looking for.
Your performances are such a great mix of poetry and stand up. You’ve got a great stage presence. Have you always enjoyed performing? Did that come naturally to you?
Yeah, it always felt right. Of course, I went through my phase, both in writing and on stage, where I was like, “I don’t normally let people read my stuff” or “I totally have stage fright,” but it was just another way of getting attention. Neither of them were actually true. I love people hearing my stuff and I love being on stage. I just knew there was always a lovable guy in there, ready to get out. So when poetry slam happened—which is just a competition. I think people confuse it. Slam poetry doesn’t really exist. Poetry slam is the competition, and if you’re not in the competition, then it’s just spoken word or poetry. I haven’t done slam since 2008, but when I started, I found out about this medium where I could just rock my words, which I had all the confidence in the world on, and I could rock my words without my mediocre guitar playing or singing or torturing people with that any longer, and that’s when I found what I was looking for. Because I knew I was a writer. I knew I wanted to be on stage. I knew I wanted to get it all out like a rock star, viscerally, from my body. I needed it. I didn’t know how to do that without a band. And slam was such a great place, like a great happy medium that was built for me.
I remember when I saw you open for Ani DiFranco in 2007. Before the show, you were standing at your merch table, and no one was paying attention to you. You were just a guy standing there with a table of CDs. But after your performance, you were surrounded by new fans. It made me think about how much courage it takes to get up on stage before an audience that isn’t there to see you and doesn’t know who you are, and you have to win them over. Is that nerve wracking for you?
It is nerve wracking and sometimes exhausting, proving myself for 20 years. But again, I have the advantage of the lowest expectation on my side. I don’t think the average person gets excited to go see a poet. When I walked out on stage for those things, people didn’t know what was about to happen. It took them a minute to figure it out. I wouldn’t start with funny pieces. I would start with something heavier to establish the space. Because when I started out with a humorous piece, it wasn’t really comedy, and they didn’t know entirely what was happening. This is before the crest of the wave in spoken word when spoken word was not really everywhere yet.
Speaking of the crest, I remember when Def Poetry Jam was on HBO and then on Broadway. There was a period where spoken word seemed to be everywhere, and then it subsided. You’ve been through the whole evolution; how do you feel about how things are now versus then? Is it better?
It depends on the angle that the question gets asked from. I know that you’re asking in a general sense, so I’ll say more yes than no on is it better, only because this medium has expanded to provide other people with a platform for maybe an otherwise unheard voice. Because writing and spoken word and most serious art forms don’t always attract people who had it easy, or somebody who’s not dying to express themselves because they weren’t heard or witnessed or got to witness anybody. So is it better in that regard? Yes, because I think witnessing is fundamental to the infrastructure of healing. To be witnessed or witness someone else is the reason for poetry or movies or music. All it is is about being witnessed or witnessing. That’s what that feeling is. Music, when it sends electricity up one’s spine, is because they feel witnessed on a cellular level. That music is witnessing what they feel. It’s the same with words. So in that regard, absolutely, it’s gotten better. More and more and more people feel witnessed.
I phrased it as a “yes, it’s grown, but” sort of vibe and the “but” comes from: poetry slam itself can often turn into the trauma olympics and also is where call-out culture is at its most intense. Not that there’s anything wrong with being called out, but the overkill of eating your own is its own problematic situation.
I was re-listening to Live at the Typer Cannon Grand, and there were so many moments where the audience was just fully locked in and positively responding to what you were saying. Are you ever surprised by what does and doesn’t connect with audiences?
Yes, I am. It’s such a great question because what it brings up for me is the joy of when someone calls out a line that I knew was good or clever or that I was proud of, and no one’s ever said anything about it. I live in Porto, Portugal, and there were these women who were in Porto and knew my work, and they found my contact and said, “Hey, we’re going to be in Porto, and we know you live there.” I agreed to go meet them, and they have this inside joke between them, based on a line I wrote that in 20 years no one’s ever said anything about. In “My Town” I say, “Cute like three-year-olds / Like the book about bunny suicides / Cute like Old Yeller before he got shot in the rabies / Good actor, that dog.” They have an inside joke between them that they’ve used their whole friendship. And I don’t know the context of when it comes up, but they’ll look at each other and go, “Good actor, that dog.” You know, the guy that recorded the audiobook with me was originally a fan, and he would tell me all the lines from A Choir of Honest Killers that rocked him. I get excited about that kind of feedback. I know the obvious ones that touch folks, but I love hearing the ones I didn’t know touched folks.
I have to ask about “Convenience Stores” because that poem is one of my all-time favorites. Can you share anything about how it came about?
That one’s easy. I was at the 2002 National Poetry Slam Finals in Minneapolis, and I had parked my car on the side of a road somewhere and left it there for two days. And when I went back after the finals were over, it was gone, and when we found it, it was without the driver’s side window and the stereo. So “Convenience Stores” was the result of me driving 2,000 miles back to Seattle without a car radio and taking Mini Thins before they were illegal. It was the combination of two moments on the road. One was a convenience store woman who did actually offer me a free cup of coffee, but I never touch the stuff, still, and on that drive back, around 4 a.m., I stopped at a convenience store in North Dakota, and it was so bright, and that’s where I got the Mini Thins. It was a combination of those two situations running through my head.
And I was 23 years younger, and I just opened my mouth back then. I have a tendency to put too much pressure on it now. My own editing process exhausts me. But back then, I just opened my mouth, and the momentum formed words relative to the moment, whatever was going on for me. That was one of the easier pieces I ever wrote. It took about 24 hours.
That poem generates a lot of emotion every time I hear it. Who are some of your influences as a writer? Who are some of your go-to artists for inspiration?
TV on the Radio released an album called Dear Science. The whole album is fantastic, but I’ll narrow it down to one particular song, which, when I heard it in headphones, was one of the most well written songs. It’s called “DLZ.” Also that year was an album by a group called These United States, who weren’t very well known, but the album is A Picture of the Three of Us at the Gate to the Garden of Eden. That entire album is fantastic. Jesse Elliott, the lead singer, his writing on that album is so clean. I love it when I know somebody has an editing process and they’re not just giving a stream of conscious, but they’re going in to say what they actually want to. Every word’s on purpose, and they’re not forcing rhymes. Each line has substance, and one line is better than the next line, or supporting the fact that the most badass knockout line is coming. I know a good lyricist when I hear them, because I’ve seen poetry or music seven nights a week for 25 years.
Just to back that up: When I’m teaching a class about cliché, I remind them how much I see open mics and poetry. So I know that everywhere in the world, every night of the year, in every single reading that’s happening anywhere, someone is saying “shrapnel” or “swirling” or “kaleidoscopic” or “cacophony.” They don’t know these things because they haven’t been buried like hatchets into your ears, but it’s true. You wouldn’t believe how many artists say these things. I have this list of secondary and tertiary clichés, and where I think they come from is because when they sit down to write, they’re overwhelmed, and that’s what their energy does. And so they put the overwhelm on paper, instead of going behind that doorway and seeing what caused it. I know when I hear lyricists and writers who walk beyond the doorway word or the cliché or the being overwhelmed, and they take agency over their writing and not let the overwhelm win.
Other [influences]: spoken word artists—my dear friend Andrea Gibson, my dear friend Derrick Brown. Writers, in terms of fiction: Tom Spanbauer. Mike Doughty, the old lead singer of Soul Coughing, which ironically, has one of the worst band names ever. I can’t stand the cliché word soul. It’s my least favorite, probably. “Soul” is in every poem that was ever written.
What’s a frequent piece of writing advice that you find yourself giving?
Don’t fake cry. Staceyann Chin said a line that explains it most and it always stuck with me. Poetry slam is scored on a scale of one to 10, and it’s a gimmick to get people excited about poetry. That’s where the trauma olympics plays in, because you’re going to get scored higher if you reveal an identity poem or a rape poem. I would see so many people up there with their chin twitching, and it wasn’t real. And Staceyann Chin [said], “I don’t want to write for the slam any longer. I no longer wish to fuck the hearts of the judges just to give birth to a bastard 10.” And that’s my biggest piece of advice: Don’t fuck the hearts of the judges just to give birth to a bastard 10. So that’s Staceyann’s quote. There’s a guy named Jack Plotnick. He’s an acting teacher in Los Angeles, and he says, “The universe always pays off on a joyful risk.” And then I like to remind people, you don’t have to be brilliant every time you show up, you just have to show up. My shit is certainly not brilliant the first time it comes out. That’s why I love being a writer, so I can edit myself.
You turned 50 recently. Is there anything you want to achieve professionally during this next chapter? Anything you haven’t done yet that you’d like to try?
Absolutely. I would like to achieve writing a successful screenplay. I’ve had a lot of time to write one over the last 10 years, and I haven’t. I’m not going to put something out that I don’t find really good. I also just haven’t shown up for it. So I would like to show up for it, make it happen, and that’s around the bend from the new book. I’m looking forward to making that happen and potentially playing a role in the movie. I went to L.A. to become an actor and was able to support myself as a poet, which is pretty rare, but I was so busy supporting myself as a poet that I didn’t put all my energy into being an actor and then the opportunity to move to Porto happened. I’m not ready to let the acting thing go, but I’m fine, because the other thing that I wish to accomplish is something that’s come up three times recently from different people who don’t know each other.
Having been touch and go my whole life, literally moving around and being nonstop and not stable in a routine and living big and applause at the end of the night and drugs or whatever it may be to keep me at an epic baseline, I am really looking forward to better understanding and experiencing how to more frequently appreciate the little things. Not something that needs to surge or generate passion or consume but to just really appreciate and be present. You know, I’ll be walking with people who are really attached to nature, and they’ll just be like, “[This is] the greatest thing you’ve ever seen. It’s so beautiful.” I get it. I lived in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve seen some pretty unbelievable landscapes and sunsets, and it’s been a good life in that regard. And I can tell by the way people react to it that I don’t feel it like they do. It’s the same way with gratitude. All my life, I have known gratitude as an answer, as a thing, but sometimes I don’t know how to express it other than “thank you, thank you, thank you.” Which just feels like praying like a beggar instead of a child of God.
I’m drawing a parallel in saying that appreciating the little things, which is what I wish to accomplish, that’s the same way that concept has largely landed for me. Like, yeah, totally I get it, but I don’t know that I feel it in my bones like you do, and now I want to feel it in my bones. I really want to appreciate the little things.
To learn more about Buddy Wakefield, visit his website or find him on Instagram.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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