Famous poet Buddy Wakefield will give a free poetry workshop today at 1:30 p.m. in the Senate Chambers and a performance at 7 p.m. in the Union Ballroom as a part of the Shepard Symposium on Social Justice.
The one-session workshop will consist of Wakefield working with attendees on their poetry, with an emphasis on the social justice approach. His performance will be an hour-long show of his original poetry.
“Mr. Wakefield was chosen because of his emphasis on social justice in his work,” said Amanda Byzewski, 7220 Entertainment fine arts and lectures events coordinator. “This will be his first time performing at UW, but we thought his own poetry reflected the values of the Shepard Symposium event.”
Wakefield’s arts career began after he left his position as the executive assistant at a biomedical firm in Gig Harbor, Washington, and sold and gave away all his belongings. He moved to small town and set out to tour North America poetry venues through 2003. He spent most of his career based in Seattle but now claims Los Angeles, California, as home.
Wakefield is a three-time world champion spoken word artist featured on ABC Radio National, BBC and HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, and has been signed to both Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records and Sage Francis’ Strange Famous Records.
With the support of anthropologist and producer Norman Lear, Wakefield won the Individual World Poetry Slam Finals and went on to share the stage with notable performance poets in over 2000 venues internationally, including The Basement in Sydney, Australia, The Great Lawn of Central Park and House of Blues New Orleans to San Quentin State Penitentiary, Scotland’s Oran Mor and Zimbabwe’s Shoko Festival.
“Mr. Wakefield is a world-renowned poet,” Byzewski said. “He can bring in his unique perspective and communicate some of the things he has learned from all over the world to the UW/Laramie community.”
Wakefield is an author at Write Bloody Publishing and an original member of Youth Speaks board of directors in Seattle, a non-profit organization cultivating youth leadership through spoken word poetry. His work has been published internationally in dozens of books and has won multiple national collegiate debate and forensics competitions.
The entertainment committee, Byzewski said, “tries to bring speakers and events that expose UW and the Laramie community to different ideas and cultures. Buddy Wakefield will offer a new perspective on social issues that will be communicated through his poetry performance.”
Wakefield’s events are free and open to the public. Free food will be provided. For more information about Buddy Wakefield or to view his previous performances, visit BuddyWakefield.com.
