Last week I was able to talk with National Poetry Slam Champion and 3 time HBO Def Poetry Jam Poet, Rafael Casal. I had so much to ask him from being on HBO and his piece “Abortion” to politics and his debut LP, As Good As Your Word.

What was is it like the first time you were on Russell Simmon’s Def Poetry Jam on HBO?
I was 18 and scared out of my mind. Everybody there was about 7 years older than me at least and thought that I wasn’t going to do well. A lot of people were treating me like it was a courtesy to the youth slam scene to let me perform. It was kind of a point to prove that I deserved to be there. There has always been a tension, a weird relationship between the adult spoken word scene and the youth scene so I was trying to not play into it at all. When I was performing I stared at the ground the entire time (laughs)! I’ve never had a problem with crowds ever but because there was so much pressure with that event, I was kind of freaked out. I had just written that poem, “Abortion” a few days before the show. I felt that everyone was so overly polished all of the time so I wanted to read whatever I wrote that week. My girlfriend at the time had just gotten pregnant and it was the only thing on my mind. It’s a very touchy subject and was received in a very odd way. I’m glad that I did it though, it got me back on the show the next season.

About your poem, “Abortion,” was that easy to write and hard to share with the public or hard to write and easy to share with the public?
It was very hard to write. The act of sharing it was a little intimidating because I know it was a topic a lot of people felt strongly about. The thing about spoken word…everyone says to be honest, open up and let it all out, it’s all love but that’s not really true. There are certain things that you just can’t say. With that poem I got a lot of positive feedback and I got a lot of hate mail. I talked about the fact that I was being selfish and I wanted her to have an abortion. Now how I acted in front of her and how we interacted in our lives was totally different. On paper and on stage was just one thing that was going on in my mind in the moments that I wrote it. That’s not necessarily how I acted or what I did but just portray a feeling that men have that we don’t talk about. I don’t think everyone understood that concept. I don’t even think I fully understood what I was getting myself into when I did the piece. Writing it was extremely liberating and difficult to admit certain selfish things that I wanted to say or think. Sharing it just felt like sharing any other poem but the response was something that had never happened before. All kinds of people are watching this show with their different opinions and their preconceived notions of what spoken word is meant for. That was the first time I realized just how far television reaches. That was a lot to deal with at 18 (laughs).

When writing “Barbie & Ken 101” were you inspired more personally or more by society?
That poem has a really weird story attached to it. There was this event in downtown Oakland. There was a couple there who would always bring their daughter. She had made a little doll and had taken a hammer to Barbie, had nails through her, cut her hair off, painted her, and marked Xs in spots where she was fake. I had won the Slam that night and I got this trophy (laughs) and I didn’t really know what to do with it. I put it on my desk and was staring at it thinking that this 8 year old girl just gave me this mutilated Barbie doll. Clearly someone had a talk with her about how messed up Barbie was and this was her response. That was pretty intense and she was lucky to realize that at 8 years old. That’s something that we learn long after Barbie & Ken and it has a huge effect on the way we see the world. Two weeks after that I caught my girlfriend at the time throwing up. I didn’t even know that she did that and we had been dating for 3 years. When you get hit with a topic you just start seeing it everywhere so I wrote about it.

For “First Week of a Break-up” what were your emotions that you wanted to convey originally?
“First week of a Break-up” was written before all of those. They called me for season 6 two days before it was going to air. I was working on my record at the time so I flew to NY. I had 2 pieces that went through the editing process and had cut out a lot – because it’s for television you can’t say certain things – it’s not a free speech show. They had cut down my pieces to the point where they weren’t good poems anymore so “First week of a Break-up” was all that I had. It actually had a different ending but they cut that too. The original point of the piece was in response to the idea that when the relationship’s over, the front for guys is to just kind of patch it up, have a night with the boys and we’re good but it’s really anger and jealousy that we tend to feel. Sadness, being genuinely hurt is like not even appropriate for us to talk about. “First week of a Break-up” piece was more for self therapy than it was for the audience. I really like how clear I got when I was writing. Interesting though, I felt that it was the piece that people felt the least and I knew that going into it.

What do you see now that you didn’t see then when you first wrote “First week of a break-up?”
It got made into a music video on Youtube and the director, Erica saw it in a different way. There was this whole fight scene, this memory moment – which I had intended for the piece but I saw it so much more as a cartoon metaphor. I had this image of jealousy and neglect children running around your legs. I saw this world that we step into once we are so much in our relationship and so needy and in love that we just can’t break out of the conflict. I saw it as very Alice in Wonderland place that you spiral into. Everybody that has talked to me about that piece has heard it in a completely different way than I had intended it. I guess that’s kind of perfect.

Okay, so I really want to know…have you sent “Billing Them For My Rights” to any political departments or political figures?
(Laughs) No. It’s the kind of piece where I wrote it for a specific event in San Francisco. At the time, that event was like the biggest thing in the Bay Area. There were 2,000 people there and it was a very political time. I wrote the poem really out of frustration. Somebody challenged me to read the Bill of Rights and I realized that I had never actually done that. It really wasn’t until the last 2 years that I really started thinking about my work on a national level. “Billing Them For My Rights” is a very delicate piece. People get really mad and people are really supportive. Those are the most important spoken word pieces. I feel like I should take every opportunity to perform it where it needs to be heard, not necessarily where it will be applauded, which is generally what I’ve been doing.

Obama or McCain?
Obama.

Good. Now when you started writing poetry in high school, did you know that you wanted to make a career out of it right away or that thought came over time?
I started writing when I was 14 to avoid failing an English class. My English teacher said that if I read some of my raps at a poetry slam that I wouldn’t fail. I was pretty bad student but I wrote all of the time. My parents had taken me to a Slam too and me with my little 14 year old cocky self said, “I could do that.” So I started writing poems, going to slams, and it took about 2 years before I actually won a Slam. I liked the idea that I could do something on my own that people appreciated. I realized that if you work hard at something, you get gratification and people listen to you. I don’t that had ever happened to me before so I think at first it was really for that. When I was 17 and started going to the bigger Slams, that’s when I started seeing people were doing this for a living or thinking about going into theatre and music with it. I realized that “Oh man, I think I might have found something that I am good at.” I don’t think that I ever committed to it as a career for life, even now. I just write, things just keep coming up, the way I approach those things keep changing, and the venues keep changing. I think as long as I am writing and contributing something valuable, I’ve got it. The minute that I am just repeating myself I’ll probably get out.

Describe the sound, the lyrics of your debut LP, As Good As Your Word.
It’s very experimental, melodic, dark hip hop. It definitely has an entire foundation in the writing. It’s somewhere between literal and abstract…it walks a line between metaphorically wordy and painfully literal. It is definitely a storytelling record.

What do you think makes your poetry really effect, really touch other people?
I would hope that it has something to do with what I strive to do, which is to be as painfully honest as possible. In doing so I am probably not becoming everybody’s favorite person but when people hear it they really feel in the moment. Hearing it from someone else might be enough for them to acknowledge it. I have this piece called “Monster” and it’s all about being numb, going to a funeral and not being able to cry really…not being affected at all and wondering if something is wrong with you. I don’t think anyone’s ever really talked about that, they just sit and try to make themselves cry. The poem was about acknowledging the fact that I felt that way. People at home knew which funeral I was talking about and I got some flack after that. But the feedback I have gotten from people that I don’t know has been like, “I know exactly what feelings you are talking about.” It’s the kind of thing that I don’t think people would ever get to in dialogue with the people that they are extremely close to but here are these people that I don’t know, all over the country and we can talk about it. Putting out that open mind and open heart, I would hope that people would appreciate that. Any other way that they appreciate it is fine too, but that’s what I am going for.

How has traveling across the country helped your perspective when writing?
I grew up in a liberal bubble. You can piss a lot of people off by saying something like “F Bush” in the wrong spot. I am much more attune to respecting people’s different opinions. Growing up I didn’t care and was almost really hostile…quick to defend what I thought because I was so sure that it was right. As most people discover when they enter their early 20s, they realize that the world is bigger than the area that they grew up in and they do not know – . I leave my writing a lot more open ended for discussion than to declare something or make a statement like before.

What do you consider your best poem?
I don’t think that I have written it yet. Every poem feels like it falls short. (Long pause). I just wrote a piece about selling out that I read at the Nationals in D.C. about a month ago. I got a call wanting me to endorse Miller Chill. They wanted me to read this poem that they had written for me which had a lot of spanglish in it. I read the script and was just so offended and so I wrote a poem about it. It was so much less a declaration and just questioning how we define our art’s integrity. At what point do we compromise our art to make money? So right now that is my favorite poem.

Def Poetry is over and is now filming an HBO reality show about the youth slam that I came up in. It’s going to be an hour and a half special at about 8 episodes of finals, semi finals, and all of that. These kids are going to get famous the same way the people got famous off of Def Poetry. People are going to call them and give them offers for money so I wanted to write a piece on how persuasive they can be when trying to get you to sell your stuff out.

So do you think being successful always means selling out?
I hope not. I’ve definitely redefined what I thought selling out was. When I was younger, selling out was that if you do anything besides what your art is, you sold out. If you do a car commercial, a Coca Cola commercial, you sold out. Then I saw all of my favorite, “true” artists do all of those things. I didn’t call them sell outs, I wrote them all off as exceptions. Did I feel like any of them compromised their art? No, not at all. They didn’t change their art for the advertisement. The question is, did they change what they were going to say anyway because somebody paid them to. That is where I draw the line. That’s what my problem was with the Miller ad. They were going to pay me to say things that I felt offended by and did not agree with. When I was 15 I didn’t have to pay any bills so when you start having to pay rent, taxes, car and school loans…when Coca Cola calls up and says “I want to use this song that you wrote for this commercial and we don’t want to change it at all” there is not really a reason not to do it.

Are there certain issues you are passionate about that would be considered a signature topic of yours in your poetry?
I know in my music I talk about death a lot. I find it harder to talk about in poetry. More than anything, I always come back to things that are ironic to me. I generally tend to write from anger. I am most angry when I feel like something that is a big deal is being made into something small. I like to take things that are being considered small and unfold them so they are completely exposed.

Currently Rafael Casal is Creative Director for the Performing Arts program at University of Wisconsin: Madison and studying for his Bachelors Degree. He has also directed a play about water crisis to open later this year.