A commentary from American poet Mark Nowak, who is creating a country-wide buzz by applying hip-hop sensibilities to politics and breaking news. His book of poems "Shut Up Shut Down," published by Coffeehouse Press, is drawing national attention and praise.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) My name is Mark Nowak author of a new book called shut up shut down just out from Coffee House Press.

(00:00:09) Well, I was really

(00:00:09) influenced in the early 1980s by hip hop music by early rap music by people like Afrika Bambaataa by Grandmaster Flash by Run

(00:00:18) DMC. And this technique of sampling is used where they would go out and take records and take notes and lift weights and with words off of other records that were existing and Sample them in a mix them and collage them together. I learned collage from Afrika Bambaataa and from Run DMC long before I learned it from poets and visual artist. And so I take that technique of going out and finding words already existent in culture words that workers have spoken words from Ronald Reagan speeches.

(00:00:50) And then I collage all of these together into a poem that then kind of examines whatever it is. I'm trying to look at that moment be at the Ronald Reagan strike the deindustrialization of the steel industry the clothes shutdown of the taconite industry, and so instead of sort of a Poem in which the poet speaks as most boats do from this perspective of the eye and this is sort of what I am experiencing in the world. I'm really trying to construct a sort of collective voice. So the voice of the we the voice of the people speaking in the poem and so you'll hear lots of different voices mix

(00:01:23) together. This is an

(00:01:28) excerpt from a long poem called Hoyt Lakes shut down and in May of 2000 LTV steel announced that it was shutting down the point Lakes. Taconite processing plant, you'll hear three different voices in the piece. One of them being Sam Walton the founder of

(00:01:42) Walmart one being ads from the newspaper

(00:01:45) from that day. And then the last word you'll hear is the name of one Iron Range town and the number

(00:01:50) of workers who lost their job their

(00:01:57) February 27th 28th, 2001. We're all working together. That's the secret and will lower the cost of living for everyone not just in Car, but we'll give the world an opportunity to see what it's like to save and have a better lifestyle a better life for all we're proud of what we've accomplished. We've just begun. KFC welcomes Walmart Supercenter 8 piece chicken meal with spicy barbecue wings 1599. Welcome to Hibbing Walmart Supercenter from your new neighbor Hardy's. not everyone was as enthused about the store's opening members of United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local Number 11, 16 picketed the entrances to the store Walmart brings substandard wages and benefits to the area union representative said in a statement Windows is shutting down Babbitt 55 And so one of the things that really interested me in the poem and in the poem is that you had the simultaneous thing happening where the taconite industry is shutting down Walmart is moving into the community and who is welcoming Walmart, but other multinational corporations like Kentucky Fried Chicken like Hardee's so you no longer have the welcoming committee that is local you have it that's multinational.

(00:03:20) One of the main goals I have is to

(00:03:22) really try to shift the kind of social ground in which the poem typically happens when my last book came out from coffeehouse revenants. I found myself reading at a lot of bookstores at a lot of colleges and I go to different cities and I could almost predict who is going to be in the audience. I knew what poets would be there. I knew what literary critics would be there. And that was about all that would be there with this book. I really made an attempt to try to push people and myself too. Really rethink where literature and the poem can happen. I've done things with the Auto Workers with the American Federation of teachers red and union halls labor Halls Redford different Union groups as part of their membership drives things like that. But trying to find ways to bring these words back to those people who inspired me and whose words are in the book.