Local collective Get Born aims to put youth and danger back into poetry
By Stefene Russell
Photograph by Pete Newcomb
How repulsive it is
To hear little girls on bus
70 Grand
utter dreads of summer school
amidst bottle feeding
—“Everybody’s Pregnant,” Joseph Sulier’
On a swampy summer night, a few dozen people sit on folding chairs and thrift-store couches in a stuffy room at the Community Arts and Media Project community center on Cherokee. They wipe their foreheads with the backs of their hands and flap their sweat-stained shirts, but no one wants to turn on the fan; it would drown out the poetry.
Later that night, poet Matt Questionmark (nattier and warmer than everyone else in a swell porkpie hat) turns on the fan, but compensates by projecting like an actor. The rest of the readers, including the diminutive Larva (whose voice is also small, though her poems are not), keep the fan off. People shift forward in their seats to hear every word; they clap after every poem.
If the vintage anarchy posters on the walls were not the first clue, then the poetry is the biggest one: This is no track-lit, elbow-patches poetry reading, where it’s advisable to sit at the back of the room should you want to politely catnap through the boring bits. This is Get Born, a monthly chapbook and poetry reading series organized by Joseph Sulier’, a 24-year-old poet weary of mustily academic poetry readings and a local literary scene in need of a dose of adrenaline.
“Youth,” Sulier’ says, when asked to describe Get Born. “Real feeling, real excitement, real passion about what we’re doing. It’s not even necessarily age—just a vitality.”
Indeed, proto-beatnik and literary journalist Philip Gounis, formerly of Steamshovel Press and the Soulard Culture Squad, is one of tonight’s readers. But the majority of the poets here are young and unpublished. They write of a St. Louis traveled by foot, bus and bicycle, crappy hourly jobs, cheap whisky and sometimes (in Mathieu Paul’s case) smoking a menthol cigarette as you run late for work because you don’t have time to brush your teeth.
Sulier’ started Get Born in January after typing up a bunch of his poems one night (“I can’t use computers ... they just don’t feel right”) and deciding to make a little book. He called Paul to see if he wanted to contribute, and the two produced Get Born No. 1. “I wasn’t even planning on doing readings at that point,” Sulier’ says. “Then Tim Rakel talked me into doing a reading at Typo.” For young poets who compose on Royals, reading at a typewriter (vs. cyber) café was an auspicious debut; they filled the room. They’ve now published four editions of Get Born and held readings nearly every month.
In ’08, the collective (which also includes Joe Wetteroth and Realicide frontman Jim Swill) will amp up their offerings with recordings of live readings, some backed by noise bands—but not on CD. Sulier’ prefers cassettes, because “they’re real”—a material match for the spirit of the poetry. Though they’re weary of academia, Get Born’s not slam (“I could go on for days about the slam thing,” Sulier’ sighs, shaking his head). And it’s not Bukowski, Kerouac or Patti Smith. They are trying, as the name demands, to make something new.
“Just the way that you put two words together and it makes something new, it can be incredibly profound,” Sulier’ says. “‘Get born’—reading those words apart, or in a different context, there’s no meaning. You put them together, and there are endless meanings behind them. It falls under the same idea as a rebirth of what’s going on, the feeling that we’re trying to convey—it’s urgent and it has to get done now.”
On September 16 at The Royale (3132 Kingshighway) Get Born presents a classic St. Louis poets’ showcase; there are also readings every first Monday at Duff’s (392 N. Euclid). Find Get Born—the publication—at Vintage Vinyl, Star Clipper, Left Bank Books, Apop Records and online at theheartworm.com. For more info on books and monthly readings, go to getbornbeat.blogspot.com or myspace.com/getbornbeat.
