From left: On stage at C ypher 120 (photo by Cur t is Price); top right and bot tom right, compet itors perform at Lounder Than a Bomb Tulsa 2014 (photos by Jeremy Charles)
I
still get nervous. My heart pounds in my ears. I take my place behind the mic. This will be roughly the 1,567th time I’ve taken the stage—I’m a teaching artist through the Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa, but I’ve been a poet all my life—but my palms get sweaty, my hands still shake when I speak.
Here’s what I see when I’m on stage: college professors and hip hop artists. Single moms, choir singers, and cashiers. They want poetry. Poetry reminds us of our commonalities, our shared joys and heartbreaks. Poetry is what we want when when nothing else will do. At first glance, you might not realize you were in the company of so many artists and muses. Tonight, the crowd is hungry. It wants to be provoked, inspired, lifted out of the mundane. I ignore my anxiety and give them what they want. I become a whirl28 // FEATURED
ing dervish, a woman possessed. It's Monday night at Creative Room, in Tulsa's Pearl District. It’s the night for Cypher 120, a weekly open mic for Tulsa’s poets, musicians, vocalists, and emcees. The room is dim, but the energy is undeniable, tangible. The place is milling with people. We've reached capacity a few times. The Pearl District is the breeding ground for the long-overdue renewal of our city. This isn’t your typical Monday night. I've heard some people say it’s like church. First timers are advised to greet three people
they've never met before, like at a Sunday-morning service. But there’s no religious affiliation. “I think the aspect of fellowship is what people come for,” said Phre Written Quincey. Cypher 120 is his project. I met Written seven years ago, at Living Arts of Tulsa. We were struggling to get a crowd to spoken-word events, to be heard. We once took our poetry to Brookside. We performed for passersby on the sidewalk. Written is a poet, an activist, a Cincinnati native. To Written, the
Pearl District is a middle ground. The true agenda of Cypher 120 is to get people to come together who wouldn't otherwise. “I believe that we should no longer enforce the segregation of our city, the division now being based on class as much as race," he said. “Art transcends all those barriers of race and class that we so commonly and comfortably use to separate ourselves." Cypher 120 is an anomaly indeed, considering Tulsa’s history and the divisions that still cut (continued on page 30) Feb. 19 – Mar. 4, 2014 // THE TULSA VOICE