Get to Know a Local Poet: Daemond Arrindell

I came across an essay by the poet Kwame Dawes in which he talks about empathy as an act of the poetic imagination. “My commitment has always been to be able to pay enough attention to those I meet,” Dawes says, “to be able to feel what they are feeling, and to then be outside of the experience enough to offer a telling of that experience.”
 
I get the sense of what Dawes is talking about through local poet/slam artist Daemond Arrindell’s work. His performances evidence a sharp intellect that, instead of contenting itself with lofty matters, is willing to explore the dynamic realities of the physical and emotion world right outside our doors (or inside, for that matter). And if you've been fortunate enough to see him perform, you know his delivery shows that Daemond is someone who really pays attention.
 
Ross McMeekin: What are you currently working on?
 
Daemond Arrindell: It's National Poetry Month, so, of course, I've got a ton of ducks up in the air; I am producing Seattle Poetry Slam's Grand Slam (Sunday April 25 at Town Hall—seattlepoetryslam.org for more info.), my residencies at Cleveland and Franklin high schools are coming to a close, and I'm taking part in NaPoWriMo, which involves writing a poem everyday for the month of April and posting it online. It's a wonderful challenge that pushes us in our craft, but it's also infuriating sometimes due to life happening, time crunches, etc. As infuriating as it is, the inspirational energy that is being spread throughout the Web/country right now is incredible.
 
RM: What is your writing process? How do you get ready for performances?
 
DA: I have several different processes, and which one I choose will depend on what I am writing, but all of them move forward in stages. Usually a line or a phrase will come to me, or I will hear or read a line somewhere that gets me thinking and I will jot down a few more lines to flush out the idea or metaphor.  Ideally, I will come back to those lines within a day or so, but other times I forget about them altogether. Some lines will become full-fledged poems and others are doomed to live as fragments. It is a rare thing that I will write a completed poem in one sitting.
 
As for performances, they have a tendency to bring out the obsessive side of me. I'll print out the poems that I'm planning to perform and go over the lines for the blocking (inflection, tone, volume, speed, etc.) over and over again—trying to find the way that the poem needs to be read. Oh, and I pace a lot.
 
RM: You are involved in many aspects of community service, and have been for some time. How does this interact with your writing and performing, and vice versa?
 
DA: I've been a counselor for over 13 years now, working in numerous capacities (juvenile detention, teen hotline, men's and women's corrections) and at the heart of all those experiences are pain, sorrow, inspiration and  truth. At a distance, they're only numbers and statistics, but when we listen to the stories that are being told, we can find the humanity within them that connects us all, brings us closer. My writing has always started with listening.
 
RM: What are some of your pet peeves in spoken word/slam poetry?
 
DA: A poet from D.C., Twayne Dooley once said, "If you sound just like another poet, poetry doesn't need the both of you." I think that emulating another writer's voice or style is necessary for the growth of any writer, but the next step is to then incorporate what you learn into the development of your own unique voice and style. It drives me crazy when artists stop that process and do not challenge themselves to grow further. This is evident everywhere, it is NOT unique to the world of poetry slam.

RM: The final competition to determine the four-person team for the National Poetry Slam Competition in St. Paul, MN in August is coming up on the 25.  Are you still coaching the team? What are Seattle’s chances of taking home the championship this year?
 
DA: I will, in fact, be coaching the team this year. It's hard to say what the chances are because slam is such a funny, quirky game. There is a saying within slam: The best poet always loses.  And while that's not completely accurate, the slam is a competition/sport based around an art form. And judging an art form is totally subjective. When you consider that the art form is being judged at all times by randomly selected people from the audience, the whole thing becomes even more random. So, the poets who can appeal to those five random people will do the best in that particular slam. With all that said, there is a great deal to be said for raw talent, excellence in the craft of writing and an ability to connect with an audience. And Seattle poets have a fantastic reputation in all of these areas. As a result, while we have not brought home a national championship yet, when other teams realize they have to compete against Seattle, they tend to bring out their big guns, so to speak.
 
RM: What is the best thing about Seattle’s poetry scene, and what is the worst?
 
DA: Best: the extensive diversity of voices and styles that you will see. Seattle has open mics/readings going on nearly every day of the week. A number of them have gone by the wayside over the years, but new ones keep popping up and as a whole the scene is still quite vibrant.
 
Worst: how disconnected those different the different parts of the scene actually are. You will see very little overlap in the readers, I have found. The Seattle Poetry Festival provided a wonderful opportunity for those different groups and voices to come together and be heard in one collective space and see and support and learn about one another, and sadly, since the Festival went defunct, nothing has stepped in to fill that niche.

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