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Transcription: [00:42:56]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
'Cause he got tired of going to literary readings and people not showing up.

[00:43:00]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
And him and his very capitalistic mind basically was like, "what can we do to get people to show up? Let's make it a competition." Right? But we're doing poems that have to do about abuse, that have to do about mental health, that have to do about trauma.

[00:43:15]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
Um, and it's almost even more traumatizing for us to allow five strangers to judge what those poems actually are. Which is why I said in my full slam career, I always say it was the abusive relationship I kept coming back to because I would say, "I'm finished with slam."

[00:43:30]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
I told Regie last month. I was like "I'm finished with slam, I'm not doing any more competitions." He said, "there's an Asian slam at the end of July." And I said, "okay, you can sign me up."
{SPEAKER name="Regie Cabico"}
[[laughter]]

[00:43:40]
{SPEAKER name="Jerrica Escoto"}
Um, but I haven't written a lot of poetry about what it means to be Filipino and queer and that's something that I want to explore now. Um, you can find - if you google me - you can find my work. A lot of it is my older poetry. I do have a book out with another poet in San Diego. I have business cards so I can give you one before I leave.

[00:43:59]
{SPEAKER name="Regie Cabico"}
Um, Verbal Fire is produced by the Smithsonian. It's part of the Asian American lit fest. It's the last weekend in July - the last Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Friday from 6 to 8. It's a free event at Dupont Underground called Verbal Fire. So you'll see 24 years of slam from Beau Sia to Jerrica Escoto.

[00:44:18]
{SPEAKER name="Regie Cabico"}
And I think our final question --

{SPEAKER name="Unknown Speaker"}
It's not our final question. I just wanted, because you asked about spoken word and poetry and Filipino Americans and migration.

[00:44:27]
{SPEAKER name="Unknown Speaker"}
Regie's probably, like, our biggest one when it comes to spoken word. And really, a legend by now, you know? He's been at it for a long time. But before Regie and, I come from San Fransisco so we had the Kearney Street Workshop. You know, look at works by Al Robles. These are the contemporaries of the writer Jessica Hagedorn and Norman Jayo.

[00:44:51]
{SPEAKER name="Unknown Speaker"}
They kind of started with that sort of beat poetry. Those were the people that preceded Regie and that, you know, and now you Jessica. But it's not in the Filipino culture, it's more of a