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Photo by Edele Horne
Patricia Payne and other poets will be performing April
8 at noon at the UCLA Store in celebration of National Poetry
Month.
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rebel with a cause
Poet packs punch with words
BY CYNTHIA LEE
UCLA Today Staff
Ever since she can remember, Patricia Payne has felt a powerful
calling to both rebel and write.
At age 9, she led a successful petition drive to overturn a rule
banning girls from wearing pants to school. Then she organized a
women’s rights group — at her Brooklyn elementary school.
Payne has channeled both compulsions into a rising career as a
poet provocateur and performance artist who tackles such subjects
as incest, police brutality and feminist issues in ways that outrage,
shock, amuse and deeply touch her audiences.
Curiously, Payne, who offstage is an administrative specialist
to Virginia Walter, chair of the Department of Information Studies,
considers herself an introvert.
“But poetry is a calling,” she explained. “You
are driven to do it. It’s a testimony to your life and to
things happening around you. At its core, you want to be able to
reach someone at an emotional level.”
In appearances across the country, in Mexico and even Beijing
at the 1995 United Nations women’s conference, Payne has stepped
into the limelight with her spokenword and one-woman shows. Locally,
she’s performed at the UCLA Hammer, J. Paul Getty, Gene Autry
and Los Angeles Children’s museums, and at festivals, coffeehouses
and conferences.
Payne’s greatest triumph came in 2002, when she entered
the invitation-only Taos Poetry Circus, regarded as the Super Bowl
of poetry slams. Although she doesn’t consider herself a “slam”
poet, Payne won the World Heavyweight Championship Poetry Bout,
the circus’ centerpiece event. A year later, she again triumphed
and became only the second woman in 22 years to win back-to-back
titles.
The 10-round showdown pits one poet against another as they perform
before 1,000 spectators, a ringmaster, a referee and three judges.
During one round, poets are allowed to use props and music.
Payne, wearing a fake torso made entirely of breasts, read a poem
that she based on a news report and wrote in the voice of a mentally
challenged girl who refuses to press rape charges against her assailants
because she confuses sex with love.
Payne also mixes poetry with video, music and props she creates.
In her latest work, “Uterine Vinegar & Other Stories,”
she and her sister, Kathleen, put together stinging, satirical vignettes
about the medical community’s biases against mature women
and their bodies. This summer, she’ll appear at a poetry and
sexuality conference at the University of Stirling in Scotland with
a group called the Neo-Spinsters.
In her free time, Payne conducts poetry workshops and public readings
for WriteGirl, a volunteer-run group that matches writer mentors
with high school-age girls who share a passion for writing.
While she carefully keeps her campus job and onstage life separate,
Payne said the staff and faculty she works with are supportive of
her endeavors.
“People here know what I’m up to,” she said,
laughing. “They’ve seen me sitting here, knitting a
uterus,” one of the props for her show.
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