Of all the new poets I met at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Calgary last year, Regie Cabico was by far my favorite. To say he's phenomenal is a bit of an understatement.
Regie Cabico is a poet and spoken word pioneer, having won the Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam in 1993 and taking top prizes in the 1993, 1994, and 1997 National Poetry Slams.
Television appearances include two seasons on HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam”. His work appears in over 30 anthologies including Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, Spoken Word Revolution, and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. He co-edited Poetry Nation: A North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry (1998 Vehicule Press ) and guest editor for Beltway Poetry Quarterly’s “Split This Rock” issue. He is a recipient of a 2008 Future Aesthetics Arts Award Regrant from the Ford Foundation, three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships for Poetry and Multidisciplinary Performance, The Larry Neal Awards for Poetry 2007 (third place) and 2008 (first place), and a 2008 DC Commission for the Arts Poetry Fellowship.
He received the 2006 Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers for his work teaching at-risk youth at Bellevue Hospital in New York. Other recipients include Arthur Miller, Sharon Olds, Stephen King, Amy Tan, and Edward Albee. As a theater artist he has directed two plays for the 2007 and 2008 Hip Hop Theater Festival, Elegies in the Key of Funk and The Other Side.
His plays have been produced at the 2003 Humana Theater Festival, 2004 Kennedy Center Play Lab, Joe’s Pub the Public Theater Festival, the Asian American Theater Festival, and Living Word Festival, San Francisco. The Kitchen, Dixon Place, LaMama, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, the New York Fringe Festival, Theater Offensive, among other venues.
He received three New York Innovative Theater Award nominations for his work in the New York Production of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind with a 2006 award for Best Performance Art Production. His latest solo play Unbuckled was presented in San Francisco at the Artaud Theater and developed with grants from National Performance Network and Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. He has been longtime curator of Composers Collaborative’s Non Sequitur Series presented at Lincoln Center, Here Theater, and The Flea Theater.
He has been 2006 artist in residence for New York University’s Asian American Studies program and 2009 artist in residence at Deanza College. He is the artistic director of Sol & Soul, an arts and activist organization in Washington, DC, where he resides.
And he's awesome
This is another qualifying slam to make next year's playoff.
Doors and Sign Up are at 8:00PM
Open Mic is at 8:45 PM
Slam is at 9:00 PM
Cover is $5-10 sliding scale.
Where: Café Deux Soleils, as per usual, 2096 Commercial Dr.
