Zedeka Poindexter has had a good year.
In the spring, the Omaha-born performance poet was named slam master of
the Om Center Poetry Slam, a monthly event where Omaha’s nationally recognized slam teams come together. She was named a 2014 fall fellow at the Union for Contemporary Art. In January, she—alongside Nebraska State Poet Twyla M. Hansen—will present in a new interactive poetry reading series at KANEKO called Feedback. A week and a half after that, she’ll read at a Backwaters Press-sponsored reading at the Community Engagement Center. She was nominated for the Omaha Entertainment and Arts Award’s Best Slam Poet title for 2014 and again for 2015.
“It’s really strange,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting it. It’s like all the things I thought I possibly might want are all happening.
“Matt told me I should probably start investing in lottery tickets, because this is a pretty good run.”
That Matt is Matt Mason, the longtime master of the Om slam who handed the reins to Poindexter in May. A longtime fixture of the slam scene—and a three-time member of the Omaha Slam Team, the rotating members of which compete at the National Poetry Slam—she was well-positioned to take the role. Now that she’s in it, she’s been hosting regular “slam family meetings” and trying to connect the city’s slam poetry, spoken word, and other creative communities.
“It hasn’t been without its challenges,” Poindexter said. “While slam has a very specific following, I wouldn’t say it’s as wide-reaching as I would like it to be. A lot of it is just a matter of making sure we’re talking to each other. Spoken word is so diverse, and slam is just one specific outlet. There’s so much out there—it’s a matter of us all appreciating things we do well and opening our arms wide.”
To that end, Poindexter has her eye on bringing one of slam’s most prominent national competitions, the Women of the World Poetry Slam, to Omaha in 2016. Started in 2008, WOWPS is a three-day event designed to foster women’s involvement in the global slam poetry scene.
“We could have the top 80 women in performance poetry from this country and other countries here,” Poindexter said. “I think we’re well-placed for that.”
She’s also at work on an exhibition piece she’ll show with the other Union for Contemporary Art fall fellows at the completion of their fellowship. She’s been working with the ideas of food and family, building a table with place settings and love letters for people living and dead she’d like to have at her table.
It makes sense for this poet locally known for a piece about her family’s recipe for peach cobbler, for a writer who’s filled a notebook with the Southern idioms her mother and grandmother would use, for a woman who wants to help people tell stories while she tells her own, too.
“There’s this idea that you can go into someone’s mind,” she said. “Slam is the perfect vehicle for that: You can see it in [poets’] faces and their reactions, and they can see it in your face and your reactions. No matter how tired or frustrated or fed up I get with art in general, I don’t think I could ever truly walk away. There are so many stories out there to hear that keep me coming back. I’m certain there’s something I haven’t heard yet. And then I think if I listen hard enough, I’ll be able to write it myself.
“With the way things have been going, maybe I’ll be the first to write something I’ve been waiting to hear. I hope. I hope.”
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