This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Susan Blackwell: The Spark File podcast may contain profanity and other adult content. Please use your discretion.

[0:10] Laura Camien: When I bump into something that inspires me, I jump in my spark file. Spark file to be something that I wanna make or how I wanna be. I pump it in my sparks. I jump into my sparks file. Let's open up the spark file.

[0:37] Laura Camien: Welcome to the Spark File, where we believe that everyone is creative, but smart people don't do it alone.

[0:43] Susan Blackwell: I'm Susan Blackwell.

[0:44] Laura Camien: And I'm Laura Camien.

[0:45] Susan Blackwell: If you're joining us for the first time, you are so welcome.

[0:48] Laura Camien: But you may be asking yourself, what exactly is a spark file?

[0:52] Susan Blackwell: Where do I get a spark file?

[0:53] Laura Camien: What do I file in that spark file?

[0:55] Susan Blackwell: These are such good questions, and we have got answers.

[0:58] Laura Camien: We do.

[0:58] Susan Blackwell: A spark file is the place where you consistently collect all your inspirations and fascinations.

[1:04] Laura Camien: And if you're like us and you're making stuff all the time, you already know that sometimes the wellspring of inspiration can run a little dry.

[1:13] Susan Blackwell: We're here to refill it.

[1:15] Laura Camien: Yes, yes, yes.

[1:16] Susan Blackwell: We are on the lookout for fresh ideas, images, and inspiration that spark our creativity and pique our curiosity, things that inspire us to rise up off of our asses and make things like this very podcast.

[1:29] Laura Camien: Or poems.

[1:30] Susan Blackwell: Lots of poems written, spoken, slammed, or def poetry jammed.

[1:35] Laura Camien: Or truly inspired curriculum that motivates and moves students, changing the world one eighth grader at a time.

[1:42] Susan Blackwell: Or an anthem, a rallying cry for the value of teachers and the nobility of teaching.

[1:48] Laura Camien: On today's Maker sewed, we're gonna talk with someone who truly sparks us.

[1:52] Susan Blackwell: And that someone is Taylor Mali.

[1:55] Taylor Mali: Hello.

[1:56] Susan Blackwell: Taylor, welcome to the Spark.

[2:00] Taylor Mali: Thank you so much, Sparky Sparky Sparky.

[2:03] Susan Blackwell: Hello.

[2:04] Taylor Mali: Taylor Mali.

[2:05] Susan Blackwell: As I live and breathe.

[2:08] Laura Camien: Taylor, we're so happy that you're joining us today.

[2:11] Taylor Mali: From the snow, the snow of Brooklyn.

[2:14] Laura Camien: Two-thirds of us, two-thirds of us are being snowed upon right now.

[2:18] Susan Blackwell: For those of you who are in the future, we happen to be recording this on just like the snowiest, blowyest.

[2:27] Laura Camien: We played a game today.

[2:28] Taylor Mali: This will be cut, I'm sure, from the episode in our fitness class.

[2:32] Laura Camien: We always play a name game before we start.

[2:34] Taylor Mali: And they said the name game today was You're a Snowflake.

[2:39] Laura Camien: What's your name?

[2:40] Taylor Mali: And each person was like, My name is Brenda, my name is Donnie.

[2:45] Laura Camien: My name is Sparkles McGillakuddy.

[2:47] Taylor Mali: And I named my Snowflake.

[2:50] Laura Camien: I'm just I'm still triggered by Snowflake.

[2:53] Taylor Mali: I didn't meant it.

[2:56] Laura Camien: Of course they didn't.

[2:56] Taylor Mali: Crystalline formation.

[2:58] Laura Camien: Of course they didn't.

[2:58] Taylor Mali: I think they meant it in the best possible way.

[3:00] Laura Camien: I love it.

[3:01] Taylor Mali: I spent one semester at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.

[3:06] Taylor Mali: And there was a, um, and this was in the mid-80s.

[3:13] Taylor Mali: So, uh, and they had a very cutting-edge gay pride group come to campus and talk to the RAs.

[3:25] Taylor Mali: I wasn't an RA, but I lived with the RA and the right.

[3:27] Laura Camien: You're like, I want in on that.

[3:29] Taylor Mali: He came back, he was shaken, and I said, What?

[3:32] Taylor Mali: And he said, we had to go around the circle, and we all had to say our names, and then they told us we had to say, and I'm gay after that.

[3:46] Taylor Mali: And they just sort of wanted to put everybody on equal footing.

[3:52] Taylor Mali: They wanted the straight people to realize what it was like to come out in a, you know, and, uh, anyway.

[4:00] Laura Camien: Well, you have to tell us what happened then.

[4:03] Taylor Mali: I'm Taylor Mali and I'm a snowflake.

[4:08] Laura Camien: I'm a liberal Brooklyn, and my name is your snowflake name, Taylor.

[4:15] Taylor Mali: Oh, what would my snowflake name be?

[4:17] Laura Camien: Kirby.

[4:18] Taylor Mali: Kirby!

[4:20] Laura Camien: I love it.

[4:20] Taylor Mali: Laura, what's your snowflake name?

[4:22] Laura Camien: Yeah, you know what's coming to me is kitten.

[4:24] Taylor Mali: I don't know.

[4:26] Laura Camien: I'm kittens.

[4:27] Taylor Mali: I love it.

[4:28] Laura Camien: Kirby and Kitten, ooh!

[4:33] Taylor Mali: But listen, I digress.

[4:35] Laura Camien: I pulled us into a digression.

[4:37] Susan Blackwell: Oh my gosh, you did, but that's all right.

[4:40] Laura Camien: You know, we always begin with the spark file price of admission.

[4:43] Susan Blackwell: And we're gonna hit you with it right now, Taylor Mali, real quick.

[4:46] Laura Camien: Can you tell us a creative risk you've recently taken?

[4:51] Taylor Mali: Yeah, I took one this morning.

[4:52] Taylor Mali: Um, freshy.

[4:55] Taylor Mali: I signed up.

[4:57] Taylor Mali: Uh, I'm a poet of a certain amount of um renown and history.

[5:03] Laura Camien: Renown.

[5:04] Taylor Mali: Please, yes, get the word renowned back in the zeitgeist.

[5:08] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[5:10] Taylor Mali: Um, I have a, uh, I'm, you may point people to this in later on in the episode, but I've got a bunch of books and a bunch of National Poetry Slam championships to my book.

[5:24] Laura Camien: Yes, you are renowned.

[5:26] Taylor Mali: But I never want to be so good at my craft that I stop thinking that I can work on it.

[5:35] Laura Camien: So I love that.

[5:37] Taylor Mali: In this time where I and many of my friends would be traveling the country or the world, teaching poetry workshops.

[5:47] Taylor Mali: Um, I'm often the, I'm, you know, I, if you send your, if your kid comes home from school and says, Oh, we had a traveling poet come to school today, it might, you know, in the past, it might have been me.

[6:03] Taylor Mali: Um, but, uh, but that really I've had to cancel so many gigs.

[6:07] Taylor Mali: And that's been devastating for a lot of my friends.

[6:11] Taylor Mali: And so they've started teaching online poetry workshops.

[6:15] Laura Camien: Absolutely.

[6:16] Taylor Mali: Absolutely.

[6:18] Taylor Mali: I've started taking them.

[6:20] Laura Camien: Oh great.

[6:21] Taylor Mali: So I show up in my friends' classes and um sometimes on your tiny desk.

[6:31] Taylor Mali: Sometimes there are, uh, sometimes I have huge fans who are in the class who really can't.

[6:37] Taylor Mali: Just in the next Zoom square over the, yeah.

[6:39] Laura Camien: Yes, and they can't really focus on like I can't believe I'm in a class with Taylor Mali.

[6:45] Taylor Mali: That's a nice ego boost, but um I'm taking another one, uh, with my friend Megan Falley.

[6:52] Taylor Mali: Um, and it's called Poems That Don't Suck.

[6:56] Taylor Mali: And I'm looking forward for it.

[6:58] Taylor Mali: I'm looking forward to it.

[7:00] Taylor Mali: Um, you know, finding just finding a new vein for me to tap into or new techniques for excavating.

[7:11] Taylor Mali: Um, and I know I just mixed a metaphor there.

[7:13] Laura Camien: Okay, I should have set cams.

[7:16] Susan Blackwell: Well, I was gonna turn the page.

[7:19] Laura Camien: Turn it.

[7:20] Susan Blackwell: I'm turning it because I wanted to say, if you are tuning in right now, this person we're speaking to.

[7:27] Laura Camien: Do you remember listeners?

[7:29] Susan Blackwell: We had an episode where I talked about doing some shows at Kansas State University.

[7:34] Laura Camien: Okay, and I spoke about these auditions that we had, and that this glorious human being walked into our auditions, took center stage, and just captivated us all.

[7:50] Susan Blackwell: Taylor is that man, and that episode helped us reconnect.

[7:56] Laura Camien: And like 20 years later, right?

[7:59] Taylor Mali: Right.

[7:59] Laura Camien: Taylor, like, how did one of your fans tell you about it?

[8:03] Taylor Mali: Like, how did that happen?

[8:04] Taylor Mali: How are we here right now?

[8:05] Taylor Mali: A fan who is really more of a friend who listens to the show said that she was listening and just suddenly heard my, realized that you were talking about me, and it was thrilling for her to sort of hear some of my backstory that she didn't know, and so she alerted me to the spark file.

[8:28] Taylor Mali: I listened to a couple of episodes and I reached out to you and said, you know, if you ever want to hear that story from my point of view, I'd love to do a show.

[8:37] Susan Blackwell: Oh, we do, we do. Tell us that story from the flip side.

[8:43] Taylor Mali: Well, we know you weren't supposed to be auditioning for grad students.

[8:48] Laura Camien: Grad students aren't supposed to have enough time to grad students aren't supposed to have fun.

[8:56] Taylor Mali: No theater for you, young man.

[8:58] Laura Camien: I don't think there was a, are there were there grad students in theater?

[9:01] Taylor Mali: I don't think there was a, you can be a good one.

[9:03] Laura Camien: Yeah, I was a intergrad student when I was a grad student.

[9:05] Taylor Mali: No, yeah.

[9:05] Laura Camien: I mean at K State.

[9:07] Taylor Mali: A master's.

[9:07] Laura Camien: Can you get a master's in theater at K-State?

[9:10] Taylor Mali: Yeah.

[9:11] Laura Camien: Maybe now.

[9:12] Taylor Mali: No, there were.

[9:13] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[9:14] Taylor Mali: Mm-hmm.

[9:14] Laura Camien: There were.

[9:15] Taylor Mali: And they would teach like public speaking, and they would teach in the speech, communication, and theater department.

[9:21] Laura Camien: So yeah.

[9:22] Taylor Mali: Did they audition for the plays?

[9:25] Laura Camien: Yes.

[9:25] Taylor Mali: Lisa Nani, she was a grad student and she had the head the lead in like Prelude to a Kiss.

[9:31] Laura Camien: Lisa Nani, Taylor.

[9:33] Taylor Mali: Lisa Nani, did you know her?

[9:35] Laura Camien: Don't joke.

[9:38] Taylor Mali: The only names I remember are Maria Santucci was the star of Hamlet.

[9:44] Laura Camien: Yes.

[9:44] Taylor Mali: Yes.

[9:45] Laura Camien: She was not a grad student, though.

[9:47] Taylor Mali: She was undergrad.

[9:47] Laura Camien: She was under a bunch.

[9:49] Taylor Mali: And so, and the guy who played Hamlet was Kevin, somebody.

[9:52] Laura Camien: Kevin Kelly.

[9:52] Taylor Mali: He's here.

[9:53] Laura Camien: He's in Florida.

[9:54] Taylor Mali: Yes, Kevin Kelly.

[9:56] Laura Camien: She was also an undergrad.

[9:58] Taylor Mali: Also an undergrad.

[9:59] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[9:59] Taylor Mali: So you performed with mostly undergrads, I think.

[10:03] Laura Camien: Well, I wasn't supposed to.

[10:05] Taylor Mali: But so I got special permission from the head of graduate studies to go and audition.

[10:12] Taylor Mali: But he said, he said, you as if it was up to me.

[10:16] Taylor Mali: He said, you just, you can't be Hamlet.

[10:19] Laura Camien: And so I, uh, I really mean like it would take too much with your coursework and yes.

[10:26] Taylor Mali: Yeah, I can't, I can't remember whether Laura was there for I did two shows at K-State.

[10:31] Taylor Mali: Um, one was, uh, Midsummer Night's Dream, where I was bottom.

[10:35] Laura Camien: And that was, that was that's a great part.

[10:37] Taylor Mali: That's the part I wanted anyway.

[10:39] Taylor Mali: I, uh, um, and that was about as big.

[10:42] Laura Camien: I couldn't be Oberon, I couldn't be Lysander or Demetrius.

[10:46] Taylor Mali: I wanted to be bottom.

[10:48] Laura Camien: I mean, and I don't know whether that was the, um, audition that you saw me do it was Hamlet.

[11:00] Laura Camien: Yeah, it was definitely Hamlet because I don't think I was there for midsummer.

[11:05] Taylor Mali: Okay.

[11:06] Taylor Mali: Well, in Hamlet, I played, I played either Rosencranz or Gildenstern.

[11:12] Laura Camien: I can't remember which one.

[11:14] Taylor Mali: Uh, and then I also got to play The Gravegigger.

[11:14] Laura Camien: Um, at the end.

[11:20] Taylor Mali: And I remember that those I loved playing those two parts.

[11:24] Taylor Mali: In, uh, I, I, uh, in my English class, I had already written, in fact, the only academic paper that I have ever presented at the Central Renaissance Conference in Lincoln, Nebraska was about doubling, about doubling in Shakespeare.

[11:45] Laura Camien: Yes.

[11:46] Taylor Mali: So, uh, I was having a wonderful moment.

[11:49] Taylor Mali: Um, there all graduate students in English have to take a one-credit class called History of the English Language.

[11:58] Laura Camien: And the semester that I took that class was also the semester that I was taking a, uh, Shakespeare, uh, tragedy class, and then I was also in this, uh, play.

[12:10] Taylor Mali: And in, uh, when I was on stage rehearsing, I could, uh, I could explicate certain lines that people didn't realize, and I would say, oh, well, actually, that word back in Middle English in Shakespeare's time, that would have been pronounced this way.

[12:28] Laura Camien: And in MVP.

[12:30] Taylor Mali: And then in when I was in my history of the English language class, I was able to say, oh, well, that Shakespeare uses that.

[12:38] Laura Camien: And when I was in my Shakespeare class, I was able to say, well, as an actor, I would have done it this way.

[12:44] Taylor Mali: And that's when you feel like you're getting the most out of your education.

[12:47] Taylor Mali: Is when you can use from one class something you learned in another class.

[12:53] Laura Camien: That is so true.

[12:54] Susan Blackwell: Sure.

[12:54] Taylor Mali: And really make those connections.

[12:56] Taylor Mali: I got dispense, I got permission from the director of graduate studies to audition for Hamlet.

[13:03] Taylor Mali: He just said, you can't be Hamlet, but you can, you can go and audition if you want.

[13:08] Laura Camien: Now I was, how old were you, Laura?

[13:12] Taylor Mali: This is 91 or 92.

[13:14] Laura Camien: Oh, I don't, uh, I was 20.

[13:18] Taylor Mali: And so I was 26.

[13:21] Taylor Mali: I had been to, I had already graduated from college, and I had been to drama school in Oxford, England.

[13:28] Taylor Mali: And I had studied with members of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

[13:32] Laura Camien: That's right.

[13:33] Taylor Mali: We were breathless.

[13:35] Taylor Mali: I had some, I had some training.

[13:37] Laura Camien: But here's the thing.

[13:38] Taylor Mali: I was nervous.

[13:40] Laura Camien: You were nervous.

[13:41] Taylor Mali: I was nervous.

[13:43] Laura Camien: What?

[13:43] Taylor Mali: But the only thing that the best way to conquer nerves is to is to trust in your talent.

[13:52] Taylor Mali: And so I walked in there going, okay, those are a bunch of theater nerds over there.

[13:57] Taylor Mali: That's me.

[13:58] Taylor Mali: That's the in crowd.

[14:00] Taylor Mali: I was that.

[14:01] Taylor Mali: I was I was part of the theater nerds in high school and in college, but here I am in draw in in graduate school.

[14:08] Taylor Mali: I've got 30 papers that I need to grade tonight.

[14:13] Taylor Mali: So I am, I'm gonna just, I'm gonna conquer my nerves by just walking in and showing them how, you know, all everything that I've got.

[14:25] Taylor Mali: And I don't, I don't remember what scene we read, but I just, um, I'm, I'm a pretty quick study, so I may have, you know, read it twice and now I'm not looking at the at the lines and um fuck off that is the superpower I want.

[14:42] Taylor Mali: Oh my god. Can you still do that? Just out of curiosity. I am I'm very good with names. I wrote a poem called Horrible at Names, where the first line is I used to say I was horrible at names when I met people until I realized that I was just asking for permission in advance to never even try. And so a lot of people, a lot of people who say, Oh, I'm sorry, I'm horrible at names, are basically telling you, I'm not even gonna fucking try. That's right. I'm not it's not worth it to even attempt to remember your name. But it so is. Have you ever remembered somebody's name and they didn't expect? There's no easier way to show somebody that you respect them than to remember their name. So as a teacher, and I was a middle school teacher, um I learned really early on that you, you know, when you when you know somebody's name, you have an instant connection with them.

And I'm, you know, I'm until recently, my job was to go into all of these schools. I'm there for one day. And one of my party tricks. Sometimes I go in to a school. On Uncle Taylor. Yes. Yes. Sometimes I'll have four classes of 20 students. And then later on in the evening, a performance for the Parents Association. And so I learn 80 names in my classes. And I give them, I give them all hand signs. I say, if I forget your name, give me this hand sign. And you know, anybody whose name is Luke, they just wield a lightsaber. That to me, I know that that's Luke. And that's my clue. Like the hand gesture is telling me what your name is.

[16:33] Taylor Mali: Yeah. And then at the performance that night, I've done this a couple of times. It's my favorite party trick. I'll say, if I had you in class today and I learned your name, stand up. Oh. And let's say of the 80 kids I've got Sullivan that shit and just go Luke. I'll have 40, I'll have 40 kids stand up and I'll just go through and I'll name all 40 kids. And then they, and I'll say, if I say your name, sit it, sit down. I'll say, What's your name? Uh show me your hand signal. And he goes, Oh, Luke, it's you, you know. And it's such a it's a party trick. And you know what? But the number one thing that made me good at remembering people's names was simply deciding that I was gonna make it a bigger priority.

[17:25] Laura Camien: Yeah, yes. Listen, I want to just go with me for just a quick second because I want a little more down memory lane. So after Kansas State University, I eventually arrive in New York, and both Susan and I were like tooling around the village, the Lower East Side, artsy type venues, performing and doing things, working with Blue Man, all that. And I start hearing your name in conjunction with like the most exciting poetry slams people have ever seen. But I did not realize, I didn't know for sure it was you. You know, I was like, how many Taylor Molly's can there be? I don't know. That just like what wouldn't that be a coincidence if it was you? But then you were on HBO's Def Poetry Jam. Tell us about all of this. Like, how did it happen? What's it like to run with a group of rock star poets?

[18:22] Taylor Mali: I mean, I don't think very many people in the world have that experience. Def Poetry Jam was the brainchild of a guy who became an associate producer on the show, and he somehow managed to find Russell Simmons' brother, Danny Simmons, who is a painter and an artist. And Danny went to Russell and said, Hey, look, you started Def Jam Records, and then you started Def Poetry Jam. How about spoken word poetry? So I was part of one of the um, we sort of put together this before we really know what the show was gonna look like. I was the MC, I was most deaf, and we took it to the HBO Comedy Arts Festival, and we were, you know, not only doing the show uh twice a night for whatever a week, we were also sort of auditioning for HBO.

And HBO took the show and said, We're gonna make it a half-hour show, and they brought in a real producer and a real director, and most deaf became the MC. And they would invite you in, and um, and you got to you did two poems in front of a live audience. And if you were lucky, they picked one. And if you were unlucky, they picked neither one. And uh, so and they always had a sort of a special guest who wasn't really known for poetry. And the night, one of the nights that I was on the show, um, I was backstage with Jewel. Wow. Uh Jamie Foxx was on the show, did a hilarious um a hilarious sort of takeoff of spoken word poets.

[20:09] Taylor Mali: I don't get nervous for uh for poetry shows, you know, unless there's like over a thousand people. I mean, that's my that's my thing. That's what I do. Yeah, you know, and uh, but when I'm a little bit outside my element, that's when you get nervous. Like I was so nervous backstage. Like national TV still makes me nervous. And you're and you're I didn't, I hadn't done voiceovers um then. I did I did 10 months as the voice of Burger King. I don't know whether you remember this. Will you say something you would have said for Burger King? When you have it your way, it just tastes better. That was a good one.

[20:51] Taylor Mali: I want to swing back even further past the Def Poetry Jam, past the Burger King commercials. Will you tell us when you first keyed into the fact that you had this burgeoning superpower around poetry and oral communication? When did that show up for you?

[21:14] Taylor Mali: Well, you're kind to put it that way. And it certainly didn't occur to me that way. But my father was a poet who used to write occasional poems at for big family occasions, weddings and birthdays. And he even wrote a poem that he recited to my mother on New Year's Eve, uh, three months before I was born. I was born in March of 1965. And he this poem is called New Year's Eve 1964. Uh, and it begins like this. Um 64 was a year of change and a year of great enjoyment from the shift in Janie's silhouette to the shift in my employment in pal's employment. They called him pal. So he must have gotten a new job in 64, and my mother got pregnant with me. That's the shift in the silhouette, right? And so they were all these rhyming couplets, and the last couplet goes like this. And in 65, there will be more of us. One more tiny Molly torso, and we will all love each other, only just a little more so.

[22:24] Taylor Mali: So they were always just sweet, sort of Dr. Seuss. Rhyme for torso, yes, I love it. Yes, isn't that great? So, but I used to watch him. I mean, I found that poem after he died. I never heard him read it, but there I heard, you know, um two dozen poems that that he would clink his glass at a wedding, and uh I don't know whether you've been to an East Coast Wasp wedding, but when you clink a glass there, it means somebody has a speech to give. If you're from the Midwest, it means they want the bride and the groom to kiss, but that's just cultural. So he would do these poems, and so I learned at a very young age that poetry can be uh, you know, at its best, a public art form where you delight the audience and and maybe bring a tear to their eye and and and ask them all to raise a glass and toast the bride and groom.

[23:22] Taylor Mali: So so I had that. And I uh my mother wrote children's books, and she was an award-winning children's book author. So words were very much a part of the part of the um part of the family. I like to tell people that um in the Molly family, no one was allowed to leave the table unless it was to look up a word in the dictionary. It's not actually it's not actually true, but it gives you a sense of of the kind of family that we were, even if it's not so. Don't let truth get in the way of a good story. That's right. That's right. It's one of my favorite quotes. Um and then I was an actor, and um, and I wrote, I was the editor of the literary magazine in high school, which was called Proof Rock. And uh I don't know why that was so funny to me, but it really at Bowdoin College, I I was in a um when when I would, and this is true for Shakespeare too.

If you come across a line you don't understand, just say it slower and more clearly. And and and you can kind of skate over it, right? Don't don't skate over it by going fast or pretending you do. Just say it slowly and clearly.

[24:33] Taylor Mali: So when I was reading poetry uh out loud for the first time in a literature class, and the teacher would say, Okay, um, Taylor, well, you want to read this one, I would just read poems slowly and clearly, maybe try to get my voice a little deeper. And um, and it was in my senior year that I was taking a poetry class, and and the teacher said, Um, okay, before we discuss this poem, um, should uh would somebody like to read it? And I felt like I had already um, you know, done my I'd already been a piglet and I I'd already read something earlier that day in class, so I didn't raise my hand, and but nobody else did either. And so uh this woman, a young woman in the class said to the professor, you know, is there anyone in particular you want to read the poem?

And she looked over at me and she said, Well, of course, there is one person who we would all love to hear read the poem. And I looked, I looked around and I was like, wait, who's she talking about? You're talking about me? Do I do I do this well? And they were like, Yes.

[25:46] Taylor Mali: So that was sort of that was an epiphany where I was like, oh, I okay, I guess I'd do this well. Was that senior year high school or senior year? It was senior year college, and then Oxford. I mean, I I was an I was an actor, I knew how to perform, but I didn't know I was good at reading poetry. And I went to drama school in Oxford for a summer program, um the year after college, and uh the and at the very end of this six-week program in Oxford, they had a talent show. And God help you if you've never been to a talent show for theater nerds. So it was 1987, and I decided to there was nobody had heard the word cultural appropriation. So I Mr. Park Avenue, I wrote a rap song about being in the at Balliol College in Oxford. And oh my God, it went over so well that for the final three days of class, students who I did not even know were saying, Oh, you know, oh, you're the guy, you're the guy. So I started writing more poetry and writing song lyrics.

[27:05] Taylor Mali: And three years later I landed at Kansas State University because my um my late wife, my then wife to be, was going to uh University of Missouri for journalism. And I was um I decided to go to can I said, well, hold on, let me let me see if there are any poets within a you know two-hour radius. And uh Jonathan Holden and Elizabeth Dodd were at Kansas State, and I I wanted to study with them, and so I went and did that. And but it was in grad school at in Manhattan, Kansas, that one of the professors on my master's committee said, Have you heard about this thing called the Poetry Slam? They do it once a month in Lawrence at a strip club called the Flamingo, where they give the dancers. That's where K U is the strip, the flamingo exotic dance and catering lounge. That's perfect. Really? And so they would give the dancers the night off and they would invite the poets to the street.

[28:11] Taylor Mali: Oh my god, in the poets. There was a mirror on the stage. There was a poll on the stage. And that's where I first went to slam. And that's when I realized that that was the perfect marriage of my talents. Literally performative. So you learned to, yes, you learn to act first, then how to read poetry. And then it sounds like even a few years later that you actually would write poetry. Right. And then I mean, no, I was writing, I was writing poetry in high school, but it was still a very solitary, tear stained experience. That was so then years later, you merged these talents.

[29:01] Taylor Mali: I merged these. And you know, if you've never been to a poetry slam, you're performing in front of drunk, racist, homophobic idiots who are giving scores to your poetry.

[29:10] Taylor Mali: Especially when it's at the flamingo. I mean, really, come on. But it teaches you you have to have a thick skin and you have to like, like anybody who goes to a poetry slam thinking that they're going to educate the audience as to what good poetry truly is, is about to lose, probably. It's not about that.

[29:30] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[29:30] Taylor Mali: No, it's about winning the audience over. So your poems have to be accessible, and they have to be mine. I tend to use humor, you know, a lot. Um, the thing I I'm loving about what you're saying, though, is you started to see these distinctions about gifts that you had, but also things that you truly enjoyed. And those distinctions were sort of coming into focus, and then you braided them together. That I feel like in a life well lived, we have a few of those moments where we recalibrate, we see those distinctions of what we're making that we love, what we're making that we've grown tired of and we need to shed, and sort of synthesizing them together in a new creative identity. And I love the idea of you just like coming into the center of that on the stage of the flamingo in Lawrence, Kansas. Very clear picture of that.

[30:31] Laura Camien: Me too, and I like it.

[30:32] Taylor Mali: I love that. I like the way you put it. Can you take us through how do you approach writing a poem? Do you wake up in the morning and say, I think I've got a poem in me today? What, you know, what happens?

[30:47] Taylor Mali: Um, what success I have had has really been discouraging to my creative process because I tend not to be able to sit my ass in the chair these days unless I have an idea that has driven me there. And that is not what I tell my students is the way to go about it.

[31:06] Laura Camien: Yes.

[31:07] Taylor Mali: So I don't practice what I'm so honest, you know. Um, I want to be, uh, my mentor Billy Collins says he, you know, he starts writing and he doesn't really have any idea where it's gonna go. And many great writers who I respect say, oh, I would never, I would, as soon as I think I know where the poem's gonna go, I stop writing. Um, that's not, that's not, I mean, these days I tend to be, you know, if I sit down at the computer or in my journal to write by hand, which I still do a lot, um, in cursive, I love cursive. And, um, I often have a great idea. I mean, I'm a good, a good idea, and idea. I have an idea. My ideas are brilliant.

[32:00] Laura Camien: But...

[32:00] Taylor Mali: But I love that. What I'm hearing you say is that if the pen is moving, even if you didn't have an idea as your ass was gently lowering itself into the chair, if you can get your fingers moving, then just the activity of doing something will bring the spark of the idea.

[32:16] Taylor Mali: Absolutely, absolutely. Because if there is a, you know, the I was talking to a journalist recently who said he was walking in his neighborhood in Brooklyn, and there was this mom and pop donut store on the corner, and he suddenly noticed that Dunkin' Donuts had put up a massive store that enveloped the mom and pop donut store, because it had two entrances on each on the two streets, on the two intersecting streets. So it wrapped around it. You could walk into Dunkin' Donuts through one door and then come out and circumnavigate the mom and pop donut store. And he looked and he kept walking. And it was later that day, he's like, you know what? I should pitch that to the New York Times, because that I think that would be a good story.

Next week he opens up this, the paper and somebody else already had that idea. And there's a story that the New York Times loved that story. Yep, big corporate, you know, chain store trying to drive out the mom and pop store. So if, if you know, if you're having a great idea, you're not the only one. And if there's a great idea, if there's a great idea out there that is looking for someone to go and spark, yeah. Are you gonna go and inflame the pen of the person who is already writing even though they don't quite know what they were sat down to say? Or are you gonna go and jolt the couch potato who says, why should I write? I don't know what I would write about. You're going to the pen that's already in motion or the pencil.

[33:59] Laura Camien: Right.

[34:00] Taylor Mali: Do you have a like a committed, you're, I mean, you are a professional poet. Like that's a, that is a made, that's some rare air. I think that's a real accomplishment. And so I just wonder if you have a commitment that you make to yourself in terms of, uh, I'm gonna make sure that my ass hits this chair and this pen is gripped in my hand X days a week. Like, do you have any sort of commitment to yourself about your practice?

[34:33] Taylor Mali: Oh wow, God, I, I so wish I did. Um, the novel. I love your honesty though. If you're like, oh, I aim for this, but I hit that. I'm growing into it and growing into the honesty. I'm about to even be even more honest. Um, my mentor was asked, uh, you know, do you write only when you're inspired, or do you write at a certain time every day? And he said, I write only when I'm inspired. Luckily, I'm inspired every day from 7:30 to 1:45 in the afternoon.

[35:03] Laura Camien: Yeah, exactly.

[35:03] Taylor Mali: I mean that's, that's, you know, he knew his process was you sit your ass in the chair and you grind out your pages and then you go back and you see whether they're good. Um, God, I'd love, I would love, I need, I am, I'm taking a workshop with my friend Megan and it's part of why I take workshops with my friends, my yes, is to give myself spark new ideas and find new excavation tools.

[35:33] Laura Camien: Absolutely.

[35:34] Taylor Mali: But, uh, we, yeah, we condone and encourage the workshop, the workshop we like your use of it. Um, can I just say that you mentioned the success that you've had, you know, um, I think it's safe to say that one of the successes was a poem called What Teachers Make, um, which was followed by a book, etc. So Susan I talk about this a lot, but it seems to us that very few people are having a tougher time than teachers are having right now. And so we were curious what you say to them to support them and lift them up during these insane times.

[36:19] Taylor Mali: Insane. I cannot imagine what it would be like to still be a teacher like they are. I mean, I'm still a teacher but not like they are.

[36:19] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[36:19] Taylor Mali: Um, you know, just, just to be just to be told thank you, um, is, is not enough. Um, and, um, but, but it's, it's a start and to a sincere thank you. Also, I sort of know a little bit about, um, where they're coming from, so I know what the challenges are. And, um, but I think maybe my next poem is, uh, is going to be, I read a, uh, educational philosopher wrote a column about how we need to stop talking about when kids get back to school, what we need to do to catch them up. Um, so I want to write a poem in honor of those teachers who know that the best way to teach is to meet students where they are. And, um, so when the kids come back to school in person, you know, I know a lot of teachers who will be meeting their students face to face for the first time and get saying, Oh, you're so much taller than I thought you were.

You know, and, um, uh, so I want to write a poem in honor of, you know, to celebrate like all the things that kids have learned in this pandemic. The learning that's happening right now, the learning that's happening, even though Zoom is terrible. You know, one of my favorite quotes is Mr. Rogers who said, um, we think of play in children. We think of playing as a break from learning. But for kids, playing is learning. You know, Mr. Rogers truly understood the power of play.

[38:28] Laura Camien: Yes, he did.

[38:30] Taylor Mali: So, um, I don't feel like that's a sufficient answer to your question.

[38:35] Laura Camien: Well, you know, I love your idea of writing this piece. Uh, I love that, and I look forward to, um, hearing that from the show. I'm gonna make myself a note.

[38:43] Taylor Mali: Yeah, to write that.

[38:45] Laura Camien: Make yourself a note. Sit your ass down in a chair.

[38:48] Taylor Mali: Yeah. But I've had, there are a couple of great ideas that have come to me several times, and I've never written them down because I think, oh, thank goodness that idea came back to me. Well, this time I don't have to write it down because it's so good I'm gonna remember it.

[39:09] Laura Camien: That's why people need a spark file, Taylor Mali.

[39:11] Taylor Mali: Right? That's it. It's true. Taylor, is there, we talked about your past, we talked about how you were formed, looking towards the future, and maybe just one day into the future. Who knows? Is there a creative thing that you know you need to do before you're done?

[39:31] Taylor Mali: Well, um, can I can I tell you about the one I'm doing? That's sort of a...

[39:35] Laura Camien: Yes.

[39:38] Taylor Mali: Um, the short version is it's called metaphor dice. And it comes out of, uh, 20 years of teaching poetry workshops in classes, uh, often to kids who don't want to be there. And I was doing this activity where you put an abstract noun and a concrete noun and an adjective on the board, and you put them together, um, and you create an adjective. I mean create a metaphor. Like what's an abstract, an abstract noun is something, uh, it's a thing, but it's not something you can touch. It's like loyalty, democracy. Okay, great. Okay, great. So that's an abstract noun. What is it? And then a concrete noun is like something you can touch. A baseball. Okay. Adjective, you know that scuff, uh, uh, old disused.

Love is a disused baseball. I love writing things. That's a metaphor right there. And it's a metaphor you wouldn't necessarily have come up with if somebody said, Oh, I need a metaphor for love. Love is a disused baseball. Um, but it's a sports-related item. So maybe there's a kid who's like, wait, I played baseball. I never knew I could use a baseball as a metaphor. And so, um, uh, there was this girl, and I said, Why aren't you involved in the activity? And she said, I'm really more of a math science person. And I said, Well, that's okay, because a metaphor is an equation between an idea and a thing. And I don't know where I came up with that, but that's, it's a great way to think about it.

And I said, Yeah, go ahead, pick three words. She's like, Well, what about this? My father, broken mirror. I was like, Okay, my father is a broken mirror. That's a metaphor. Nobody, if you said that, nobody would ever think you meant that literally. They know that you mean that figuratively, and now they're just waiting for you to explain how is that true? And that's what you do in a poem. And she said, Oh, I think I can do that. And I said, Okay, go ahead, take, take, you know, write, write down some lines. I'll come around, I'll go check on some other people. Use the phrase which is to say. And when I came back, she had written this. My father is a broken mirror, which is to say he's been shattered into a thousand pieces.

He's hard to hold without cutting yourself. My mother says he is seven years of bad luck. But even in the smallest shards, I can still recognize my own reflection. And she looked at me and said, Do you think I can do that? Oh my god, oh my god, I had chills. And the chills I got then made me think I I've got to invent some kind of game so that I can get students to this level. And that's what metaphor dice is. It's these 12 dice, red, white, and blue. And, uh, you roll them and you arrange them. Red, white, blue. Here, I got a set right here. You want me to roll a set?

[42:26] Laura Camien: Yes.

[42:26] Taylor Mali: Yeah, roll a set. I've got the blue dice that has mirror. I've got my birth. My birth was a handed down songbird. The handed down songbird of my birth. You know, my mother has sung me many stories of the handed down songbird of my birth. Um, and then if you I did this activity, I sort of slowly developed it starting in 2016. Um, I taught at a school called the Avenues, Avenues the World School. And that's where Surrey Cruz went. Yes. And that's where Robert De Niro's grandchildren went. And like lot, it's, it's so expensive. It's like $100,000 a year. They have a private security, um, Israeli security, you know. They've bought an entire building on the west side of Manhattan. And, um, I was asking my students, they were working, and I said, Hey, can I can I take some pictures of people working?

And one of my students said, No, Mr. Molly, no pops, no pops. And I said, What? And they said, Mr. Molly, paparazzi. And I was like, Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not on a one syllable, you know, uh, basis with paparazzi. Okay, so, um, so they all did this dice in the original it originally the dice were made out of paper, and the students got to write their own words on them.

[43:52] Taylor Mali: Wow. Which was great. Now they're acrylic. Um, and I had to write, I had to write my own words. Um but uh but before I get to the next iteration of the dice, and this is probably a longer answer than you wanted, but um, once every kid has created a set of paper dice, at the end of the day, I collect the the uh all the dice in by color. So all the reds are together, those are the abstract nouns, all the whites are the adjectives, and the blues are the uh are the concrete nouns. And then you can use them. The dice have a second life because if you know in a workshop the next day, a kid says, All, you know, back then all I wanted was my mother's love. I say, Well, why don't you why don't you turn that into a metaphor?

He goes, how how do I how do I do that? And you say, um, could we have the box of white dice? But the uh if they roll uh white and uh white and blue, um all I wanted what my was my mother's love becomes all I wanted was the uh unspoken side show of my mother's love. Oh which is great. And and then you're hoping the kid will and like the whole class will go, ooh, and then the kid goes, wait, do I have to use that? Because I think I just thought of something better. There you go. And that's that's there you go. And you have these dice for sale on your website. They're on if you want them, if you want them tomorrow, you go to Amazon and you give Jeff Bezos 20 bucks. Oh. And I'll get some of that.

But we want to support our local poem. But if you want to support your local business, you go to metaphor dice.com. That is some really, really cool turnkey curriculum for all those teachers out there. Yep, maybe not the chemistry teachers, but maybe the chemistry teachers who are listening to this and are like, what a lot of gonna teach tomorrow. This is I love this, Taylor. I love this. There's your gift to the teachers right there. I love that. Plus a color. It gets one better. What? And there's more better. There's more. I I wanted to create uh I'll tell you something that sparks joy is I love um I'm a maker, you know, I love fiddling things with my hands and and making things. So I wanted to create the next time I go to a conference, like the National Association of English National Council of Teachers of English, N C T E. I go, I rent a booth there and I roll metaphor dice and I do a reading for all the teachers there.

Um there's a AWP, which is the associated writing programs, uh big English nerd um annual English nerd of uh conference that I also go and sell a lot of metaphor dice there. I wanted to have a business card that I could hand out there, and so then I I started developing this idea like, oh, what if my business card could be folded up into dice? What? What if it were a big business card? And and I thought of uh producing like scandal dice where you would say you would roll it and go, my thesis professor is off fucking my first book, you know. There's like the dirty version of the dirty version. I wanted the people to take away this card. And the more I started thinking about it, the more I realized, wait, why don't like I I've made plenty of sets of metaphor dice out of paper, and it's really time consuming to cut out these dice.

If you've ever folded a uh a six-sided die into um two dimensions or unfolded it, there are 11 different ways you can configure the six squares so that they can be folded into a into a six-sided die um with tape, right? Um so I designed this card that with the layout of the red, the white, and the blue die. Um I quickly did away with the idea of scandal dice. Uh but I thought I I know what I'll do. I'll I'll I'll get these cards like pre-punched, so they're perforated so that you can sort of just rip out. And everywhere you need to fold the die, I'll score it. I'll have the machine score it. And that's called a that's called a die cut. And so, and then I had this epiphany. It's like, wait, as long as I've made uh uh as long as I've popped out a six-sided, uh six little squares that can be folded into a cube, as long as the other side was the same color, they could be reversible.

And then I got high, I got high and I I designed a cube that can be put together without tape. So it's got these interlocking tabs. So I'm I'm not, I don't I haven't produced it yet, but I just this week sent off to the printer the design for metaphor dice paper. And it's gonna be on on one side, you've got I'm holding a mock-up in my head on in my hands. Um on one side you've got my words, you know, love is a a broken spell. Um my father is um an expensive drum. So those are my words. Those are my words. And uh on the part that gets ripped away, those are all the instructions. But if you when you flip it over, it's blank. And finally the the kids get to write their own words again. And each card is less than a dollar.

Amazing. And they're made in America. So I can, you know, 20 bucks will get you 30 cards so every kid can get a set of dice, as opposed to spending 20 to buy one set of 12 acrylic dice, which are beautiful, but they're expensive, and they're made in China. Wow. Uh love that I just like the many ways your mind works, is it's fascinating. And that you're smarting. That's right. You're gifting it so that other people can uh you know benefit from literally a spark that then can generate sparks in their own minds. Like that that's one of my favorite things about it when you said the story of the the student who was like um now that we got to that, I think I actually have a another idea. Like I've yeah, it's super exciting.

If if you go to metaphor dice.com and you buy a set for yourself for $20, as you are checking out, you can for seven dollars buy a set that I promise will get sent to a teacher on my list. It's you know, you have no way of tracking that I will follow through. Yeah, but we've got your word on it. But people do it anyway, and I have been able to give away over a thousand sets to teachers who have signed up on my list. And I oh I owe this idea to my business partner Oliver. Oliver has the MBA and I have the MFA, so we're a great partnership. And he was the one who said, hey, you know, whatever we end up doing, um, however much they end they end up costing, we ought to people are looking for ways to be generous, and they just need us to help them.

So let's let's do let's let's sell a set at cost and ship it for free. So it it's just it's one of my favorite things to do. And people I love it so much. The only thing they they never get to they the the person the teacher who receives the set of dice never gets to know who sent it to them, and the only way they can thank them is to take a picture of a poem that they wrote or of their students working or a role and post it to social media using the hashtag metaphoricalangel. And if you search that hashtag, you will see a litany of gratitude. Wow. Metaphorical angel, yes, Taylor. Here's a question we're obsessed with. Okay, you do a lot of things, you work very hard at these things. What's it all for?

Do people have have you heard some some damn it? Would it be amazing if there was one right answer to this question? Just one. And has anyone gotten it right yet? Hope you nail it. But yeah, I mean, what what's what gets you, you know? Why do you get up in the morning? Why do you continue to put pen to or pencil to paper in cursive writing? Why does it mat why does any of this matter? I don't know whether this is going to answer your question, but I'm launching into it the way I would like to be able to start poems, not knowing where they're going to end up. Great. But Emerson said that to believe that what is true for you in your heart of hearts is true for all mankind. That is genius. So for me, it is I am trying to find that thing inside me that is true for me because I know that it I must not be the only one.

Yes, yes, yes. I love that answer. That's much more eloquent. We we talk about quoted somebody really fancy that raises your points on that answer. Truth is part of like when Suze and I we talk about our passions, freedom, truth, authenticity. Um, and boy, Emerson put it. I'm I'm I'm gonna steal that quote. I'm totally gonna steal that. Well, I think I have a better answer now. Oh, okay. You know why I do it? Because when you have it your way, it just bringing it back to the king. Finally, Taylor Mali, what or who is sparking you these days? I love I love listening to the genius of my of my children. Um I love what they say. And uh uh when my wife was pregnant with uh our our my daughter, our daughter, um, it was in the sum, you know, she gave birth and at the end of August.

So for the final couple of she lives just she works in downtown Manhattan, she's a senior editor at Harper Collins. It when she takes the subway, if she hits her two trains right, she can make it from uh our place in Carrol Gardens, Brooklyn to downtown Manhattan in about 12 minutes. But if she doesn't, and if you're pregnant and it's August, and no idiot is gonna give you his seat, his seat, motherfucker. Um, you know, it's it was awful. So I, you know, if I didn't have a gig to go to, I would I would drive her. And I could drive her there in a it took about the same time, 12 minutes to drive over the Brooklyn Bridge, which has no toll. And uh sometimes I would take, you know, my son who was who was two at the time.

And um, we we talked, we have a little breakfast, we have a little breakfast date, and I would drop my wife off, and I I would come off the Brooklyn Bridge and like pull a little U-turn, drop her off, and she was two blocks from work, and then I would zip right back on the on the bridge and and come right back uh to Brooklyn. And my son says, Daddy, why does why does mommy have to go to work? And I said, Well, we we've talked about this. Why why what do you think? And he said, Because somebody has to pay for the money, and I said, Yes. I'm just a poet, but somebody has to pay for the money and get the health insurance. Somebody has to pay for the money. Oh my goodness.

[56:26] This episode of the Spark File was made on Muncie, Lenape, and Seminole Land. And we hope it put another bunch of sparks in your file. Listen to us. If there is a spark you'd like us to explore, or if you've taken a spark and fanned it into a creative flame, and you'd like to share that with us. And we have been getting some goodies lately. We hope that you'll email us at thesparkfile at gmail.com or submit it through our website, thesparkfile.com. We will even happily take your feedback, but you know the price of admission. First, you've got to share a creative risk that you have taken recently. And be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcast. It really is a way that if you like the podcast, you can help us out by subscribing, rating, five-star reviewing, and share it with people that you love.

And if you didn't like it, I don't know, Taylor, what do you say to your critics? Thank you for coming. How gracious. Oh my god. If something tickles your fancy and gets your creative juices flowing, we're writing you a forever permission slip to make that thing that's been knocking at your door. It's your turn to take a spark and fan it into a flame. You gotta take it and make it. Take it. Bye. Thanks, Taylor. When I bump into something that inspires me, I dump it in the spark files. Could be something that I wanna make or how I wanna be. I pump it in my spark files. I jump into my spark files. Let's open up the spark fire.