Beau Sia is an American slam poet. Sia was born in Ohio. He is of Chinese-Filipino descent. In 1995, Sia moved to New York City, where he attended the New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts dramatic writing program.
He has said that moving to New York made him conscious of his identity as an Asian American, something that he denied often in Oklahoma City. His cultural identity became a common theme in his poems.
Sia began performing at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, eventually earning himself a place on the 1996 Nuyorican National Poetry Slam team. That same year, he would be filmed for the documentary SlamNation. The film followed Sia and his Nuyorican teammates (Saul Williams, Jessica Care Moore and muMs da Schemer) as they competed at the 1996 National Poetry Slam. The team would go on to place third in the nation, and have a lasting impact on how people would view slam poetry.
Sia’s relationship with the Poetry Slam community continued. He eventually earned two National Poetry Slam Championships in 1997 and 2000 while competing on the NYC-Urbana national poetry slam team. He would also reach second place in the Individual Poetry Slam competition in 2001.
He wrote a parody of Jewel’s work A Night Without Armor within four hours and published it as A Night Without Armor II: the Revenge in 1998. He wrote different poems with Jewel’s original titles, lampooning her earnest lines. It is painfully detailed in its satire, changing the delicate paintings printed in Jewel’s book to rough, humorous pencil drawings by Sia. The front and back cover were also painstakingly mirrored.
Sia then began touring around Europe and the United States. He also appeared in films and published a wide range of his works in book and compact disc form. He also released an album on Mouth Almighty Records, a spoken-word imprint of Mercury/PolyGram Records that was active during the 1990s.
He was a recipient of the California Arts Council Writer-in-Residence grant for Youth Speaks in 2001-2002, and was the lead artist for the Creative Work Fund. Beau was the 2008 recipient of the Local Hero Award from KCET for Asian American Heritage Month.
Beau appeared on all seasons of HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, and performed on ESPNs 2000 Winter X-Games, Showtime! at the Apollo, and the 2003 Tony Awards. He is an original cast member of Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, a 2003 Special Event Tony Award Winner and toured with Declare Yourself, dedicated to increasing young voters in the 2004 election. He is currently writing the lyrics for the upcoming East West Players musical “Krunk Fu Battle Battle.”
AsianInNY was lucky to be able to see Beau perform and attended “The Practice of Poetry” held by Asian/Pacific/ American Institute on Feb 22nd. We definitely experienced the power of Beau’s poems!
*Source from Wikipedia*
Suheir Hammad (poet, author and political activist), Beau Sia