Irish Times Sits Down with Saul Williams Prior to Lingo Festival

Irish Times charts Saul Williams's rise to fame from the NYC poetry scene in the 1990s, to the upcoming Lingo Festival in Ireland. More:

Struggling for recognition never came into it for US poet, writer and actor Saul Williams. On a dodgy phone line from Paris, a city he lived in from 2009 to 2013, Williams says that there was no transition from pauper to prince, and as for trying to be heard as a poet back in the mid-1990s – well, there was no question of that.

“I was in graduate school for acting at NYU when I started writing poetry,” he says over the crackle and buzz. “I actually happened upon an open-mic night in the city. It was a place where a lot of people were experimenting with language, performance art and writing, and so I found a community in Brooklyn that was fun to participate in. From that night onwards, a lot of doors opened for me.

“So the idea of trying to be heard or recognised for anything in particular, no, not that. It was more participating in something cool. From then onwards, it was getting recognised and realising that what I was involved in was something bigger than I had ever imagined. The turning point was the night when I first read a poem aloud.”

He knows the exact date – “March 16th, 1995” – because he recalls he had only one poem to his name. Amethyst Rocks, an examination of racial identity in a systematically corrupt society, was Williams’s game-changing moment. When he finished reading the poem in the tiny New York cafe, someone came up to him and asked if he would like to be the opening guest at an Allen Ginsberg reading.

“And then someone asked me if I would open up for the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron, and then someone else asked me to open up for the Roots, the Fugees, KRS-One. And that was just with one poem.”

For someone who had never intended to forge a career as a poet, Williams admits the response to his debut poetry reading-cum-performance was more a present than a surprise. “I even started to earn money from reading poems,” he says, laughing, “which was something I didn’t understand. I didn’t even know you could do that. I found that vastly satisfying because it was something I would have done regardless of payment.” [...]

Learn more about Williams at Irish Times. (And if you're in Ireland–go!)