[this is my College's press release]
Frequency North, the aggressively eclectic visiting writers reading series at The College of Saint Rose, rolls on with slam poet Taylor Mali, a former teacher who uses his artistry with words to turn people to the teaching profession.
Mali will read at Saint Rose Thursday, February 26, at 7:30 p.m. in the College’s Saint Joseph Hall Auditorium, 985 Madison Ave., Albany. Copies of Mali’s latest work will be available for purchase and signing. Frequency North is sponsored by The College of Saint Rose School of Arts and Humanities and is free and open to the public.
Mali is a former teacher who now makes his living as a professional poet. Through poetry, passion and perseverance, he wants to turn 1,000 people to the teaching profession. He is considered the most successful poetry slam strategist of all time, having led six of his eight National Poetry Slam teams to the finals stage and winning the championship itself a record four times before anyone had even tied him at three. The New York City native was one of the original poets to appear on the HBO original series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. Mali also was the “golden-tongued, Armani-clad villain” of Paul Devlin’s 1997 documentary film SlamNation, which chronicled the National Poetry Slam Championship of 1996, the year of Mali’s first national team championship.
Mali is a vocal advocate of teachers, having performed and lectured for education professionals all over the world. Mali received a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in 2001 to develop Teacher! Teacher! a one-man show about poetry, teaching and math that won the jury prize for best solo performance at the 2001 U. S. Comedy Arts Festival.
Frequency North is the brainchild of Daniel Nester, an assistant professor of English at Saint Rose. In creating the series in 2006, Nester set about to plug what he perceived as a large gap in the literary events offered in the Capital Region. He purposely designed the series to be “aggressively eclectic.” In addition to teaching, Nester is the author of God Save My Queen and God Save My Queen II, both collections about his obsession with the rock band Queen, and the upcoming How to Be Inappropriate, a book of humorous nonfiction due later this year. Nester also writes for Poets & Writers, Time Out New York, Bookslut and The Daily Beast.
The remaining Frequency North schedule follows. All readings are free and open to the public. For more information, visit the series’ website at www.FrequencyNorth.com:
Thursday, April 23, 2009, 7:30 p.m.: Marilyn Nelson and Deborah Ager
Events and Athletics Center, Second Floor, 420 Western Ave., Albany
