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Big Poppa E is a Wussy Boy. I know this because he says so, with pride, at every one of his performances. "I wrote the piece The Wussy Boy Manifesto to express what it was like to grow up the kind of boy that didn't quite fit into the macho bullshit that infects every kid from sixth grade on," the 35-year-old spoken word poet confides. "As soon as those hormones hit, everything became this ritual of the biggest fish eating the big fish eating the medium fish eating the small fish eating me simply because I wasn't your average everyday jock asshole who could score with girls by being a dickhead to everyone around me. I read books instead of fixing cars." Big Poppa E (ne R. Eirik Ott) has become, over years of writing, performing and publishing his own poetry, short stories and "rants", a sort of poster boy for the Wussy Movement. You can easily picture him galloping Braveheart style over a Midwestern high school campus, a dedicated following of eyeliner wearing, hair-dyed, Pixies tee shirt-wearing clan of wussies in tow.

"It took me a long time and a lot of beat-downs by juvenile gorillas screaming "Faggot!" at me before I started to fight back," he admits. "That's what the poem is all about, turning Wussy Boy into an empowering phrase instead of a damning one, saying that just because my girlfriend wears combat boots and camouflage pants and can kick my ass doesn't mean she's a dyke and it doesn't mean I'm gay or pussy-whipped. It's to show that the problem is not me or the type of man I am, it's the fucked up gender illusion foisted upon us by this consumer-driven society that seeks to force us into checking one of only two boxes." An inspiring statement if there ever was one. Big Poppa's performance of that poem is always greeted with warm applause and frantic cheering from the dudes who just didn't fit the jock mold a few years ago, and who are now probably performance poets themselves. "As if being suspected of being gay is a bad thing anyway," he says, deadpan. "If it means I'm not a pitiful, small, helpless cock-man oppressor, then fine, call me a Wussy Boy. I wear it like a badge of honor!"

Eirik has not always been interested in poetry though. "When I was in school, I was one of the millions of people who thought poetry was boring. Most of the poetry taught in most high school and college classes is a bunch of dusty words from rich dead white men who were privileged enough to be able to afford the leisure time to write. None of it seemed to have any connection to my life whatsoever, and the language used in the poems seemed like such a dead form of expression." But, luckily for him and his fan-base, Eirik was turned on at a young age by a prominent African American poet, Ethridge Knight. "He was not one of those upper crust poets born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was an African-American man who started writing in prison while serving time for robbery. He had lived a hard life up to that point, a hard life full of drugs and fucking up, and it wasn't until finding himself in prison that poetry started to set him free."

Poetry is a fascinating outlet for young people everywhere, and it would seem ever more so now, with shows like HBO Def Poets, and poetry slams sprouting up all over the planet at an astounding rate. But who's complaining? I'd rather sit and watch a poet with something to say and an inspiring opinion then Britney Spears shaking her ass, looped on MTV for five days straight. "[Poetry makes me feel] like I'm alive, like I am breathing the breath of everyone in the same room at the same time, and we all exhale as one living entity, like I can shoot fire out my ass and catch the drapes on fire, like these little doors open up in my chest and shoot beams out over the ocean that guides ships to safety, only they're not ships, they're people. It makes me feel sexy and sweaty and ten-foot tall and bullet-proof," Eirik says.

I was lucky enough to have been granted a one-on-one interview with the man himself.

HarlemLive: What do you think about the sudden rise in poetry slams, programs showcasing poets (ie: HBO Def Jam Poetry) etc? To what do you think it is due? Do you think that a lot of people consider it a fad, or have there always been performance poets around, but are only now getting recognized?

Big Poppa E.: Poets have always existed, and I think they always will exist. They are our passionate lyrical journalists on the front lines of the human experience reporting back to us and helping make sense of it all. The writing and sharing of poetry is too old and too essentially human to be a fad.
The poetry slam community has been injecting much-needed energy into the world of poetry for more than fifteen years now, long before Def Jam thought of Def Poetry and long before Nike and Pepsi were using poets to sell their products. Performance poetry has been an underground thing for a long time, and it's only through the hard work and dedication of a nation of unknown poets that Def Poetry exists. Slamming is now so widespread -- with over 100 officially-registered poetry slams all over the country -- that the next step is something like Def Poetry, which I think is great. Anything that brings the power of the spoken word into living rooms is important, as long as it honors the extended community from which it takes most of its poets and inspiration.

I think people are tired of empty entertainment that does nothing to actually engage you and challenge you and push you to create your own work, to raise your own voice, to use your own eyes to break this world down and see through the static. That's what slam does... it doesn't just wash over you like a T.V. show, you have to be an active participant in this forming of the call and response... poetry slams are less shows and more like instant creative communities that encourage dialogue.
As most things that get suddenly popular, the focus on performance poets will no doubt grow fuzzy again, but the community will continue to expand and grow long after companies like Pepsi and Def Jam move on to the next new thing.

HarlemLive: When did you write your first poem, and what was it about?

Big Poppa E.: The first poem I can remember anything about was written in a 7th-grade writing class... It was a haiku about a dust devil, which is like a little tornado that knocks over garbage cans but doesn't do any harm. I can't really remember it, but it had the lines "ever swirling and swift / picking up the dust" in it somewhere. After that class, I'd have to go all the way to my senior year in high school to find another poem, which was some nuclear war nightmare thing called "Ode to Poison Mushrooms." I think it went something like: "shifting shafts and burning sunshine / arc across the summer night sky / pulse and flash\ and blinding radiance / as a deathbloom blossom watches by." As you can see, I was a big fan of alliteration. I didn't really write poetry until I was 24. Up to that point, I had written maybe 15 very bad poems in my life. Then I walked into an open mike poetry reading and got hooked and started writing all the time. That was around January of '92, and I've been writing ever since. I did my first slam in '96 at the Taos Poetry Circus, and things have been pretty crazy... I never thought in a million years that I could quit my day job and make my living solely through writing and performing my work, but it's a reality... It's still pretty surreal and freaky to think that I get paid to do this... shoot, it feels like I should be the one paying.

You know, it's funny... I've written maybe 40 or 50 poems in my whole life, which, really, doesn't sound like much to me... I've been fortunate to get a lot of mileage out of those few poems...

HarlemLive: I'd ask you to talk longly and lovingly about Wussy Boy Manifesto, but it would seem like that's the focus of every article that's ever been written about you, so I think I will plod along off the (rightfully) beaten path. So tell me about the zines! Before I checked your the site, I had no idea you had are so productive in that area. Why did you choose to publish your works in zines, and not in a more traditional manner (books, websites, magazines...)? How did you go about publishing your first zines?

Big Poppa E.: There is a community of underground writers and artists putting their works into zine form that spreads all over the world -- any place with a copy machine, really -- and I've been a part of that community since about the same time I got into poetry. It's just a great way to take control of your first amendment rights and tell it like it is. I think everyone deserves to get their thoughts out there, and zines and slams and the Internet empower people to do just that.

HarlemLive: Who are the main influences of your poetry?

Big Poppa E.: The whole world is one teaming influence, this huge and vast collection of stories waiting to be told, details waiting to be noticed, injustices to uncover, dramas to unfold. All anyone has to do to find inspiration is keep a little notebook in their back pocket and keep their eyes wide open. Since my work is a mixture of so many things -- poetry, comedy, drama -- I am influenced by so many people: comedians like Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and Richard Pryor; artists like Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, and Ed Ruscha; poets like Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsburg, and Etheridge Knight; directors like Joel and Ethan Coen, Wes Anderson, and Stanley Kubrick; political prisoners like Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier.

HarlemLive: You seem to be, like myself, someone who gets easily irritated by the stupidity of humanity... What is your most recent rant?

Big Poppa E.: This whole country is this big capitalistic machine that uses humans and spits them out. There is a lot to hate about a society that does that. I hate the idea of the "American Dream" where you chain yourself to a desk at some company for the best years of your life working for some company that cares nothing for you or your soul, then when you are sucked dry as an old orange, you are discarded with a gold watch on your wrist and a handful of productive years left, during which you are relegated to the shadowy outskirts of a society that profits from focusing almost entirely on youth.
I hate the carrots that are dangled in our faces as a means of keeping us docile and in our seats. I feel like I am wasting every breath I take while sitting in a desk in a cubicle in a work center... God, I count every second and leave dark black smears on the walls as I pass. [Deep dramatic breath] Yeah, but whatcha gonna do? Gots to work to earn money to eat and pay rent and buy chai, so you do what you need to do just like everybody else.

I guess I just want more to show for my life on my deathbed than the fact that I never missed a day of work. I want something more on my gravestone than "He showed up to work on time, was always on schedule, and never made waves."

My latest rant is called "26 New Rules for Poetry Slamming." It's basically a list of the lame things some slammers do over and over and over again. It's comedic, but it is a big mocking... But it's not above making fun of me, too.

You can check it out here

HarlemLive: I adore Poetry Widow... Could you tell me more about the circumstances concerning that poem?

Big Poppa E.: I often found I’d write these sappy little love poems for my then-girlfriend Kimberly every time I did something lame and hurtful. It was cheaper than flowers, you know? But, towards the end of our relationship, she would look at me suspiciously when I gave her a poem about her, as if she were waiting to hear my latest excuse for fucking up. I performed this piece for the first time at the ’98 finals for the San Francisco Poetry Slam. Everyone told me not to debut an untested piece at a finals slam that would pick the official slam team, but I did it anyway. I cried during it because Kimberly was in the audience and had never heard it. She cried, too.

After the piece, I waded through the crowd and hugged her as everyone cheered. I got the highest score of the night. It was just like a scene from Fame. This piece is also partially based on a poem by Etheridge Knight called “Feeling Fucked Up.” It’s sort of my version of it.