If you’re interested in contemporary spoken word, there is a site you must visit, a podcast to which you must subscribe. I’m talking about Indiefeed: Performance Poetry.

Each week, Mongo (or a guest host) puts out three tracks by contemporary spoken word artists, most often but not exclusively from the slam scenes. The list of hundreds of shows, nearly a thousand, begins at 1-Speed Fukin’ Bike and goes to zed mizar, with stops along the way for the famous (such as Andrea Gibson, Anis Mojgani, Buddy Wakefield, and that just takes us into the Bs), infamous, and relatively unknown. Some weeks feature themes like cowboy poets or the Urbana team. The point is, you’ll get a huge variety of material here – anybody who still thinks slam is built of people doing poor hip-hop imitations about surface-level politics needs to tune in for a couple of weeks; they’ll be set straight (though you will also hear excellent hip-hop based work and excellent political work).

I’ve been on several times, and here are five episodes featuring yours truly:

#396: “There will be no reinvention of the wheel”

#478: “In Absentia”

#639: “A Priest, A Minister, and A Rabbi”

#721: “love after marriage”

#849: “& the Valley & the Shadow & Our Former Selves”