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Brief
My name is Chad Anderson. I'm a poet (for starts) This is my poetry website. I do some other stuff too, but this site is for those who know about me or want to know about me because they've seen or heard about the poetry that I do.
Vital Statistics
Chad Anderson - Poet, Writer, Teacher, Trainer, Guitarist, Drummer, Director, Producer, Avid Editor, Audio Engineer, Videographer, Web Designer, Studio A/V Geek, Skateboarder, Straight-Edger and I do some other stuff too.
D.O.B - May 16, 1975, (making me 30 years old)
J.O.B - Teacher. Brookdale Community College. Communications Media
Residence - Shrewesbury, NJ
Marital Status - Divorced
Bio
( Not to confuse this with a full biography of my life, this is just a short background into how I got into poetry)
I started writing poetry when I was a little kid, submitting cute, pretty, funny things into the middle school and high school literary magazines. I gave up any intentions on being a "professional" poet when I got out of high school, assuming that you had to be dead for at least a century before anything you wrote ever made you famous. I had always been writing poems and songs in my spare time, but never had any intentions of doing anything with them. Then I saw Ainsley Burrows perform.
I went with my friends to a variety show called "Soul Erotica" at Joe's Pub in the city. I only went cause I thought that anything with the word 'erotica' in it had to be good. Ainsley Burrows performed 'Cataclysm' that night, and the place couldn't stop screaming. The women in the place couldn't stop screaming. Before that night I never realized how much of an impact great poetry could have on people's minds. I wanted to write like that. I wanted to perform like that. So I started writing new stuff, and looked for places where I could perform. I looked for any open mic in the tri-state area. I went to the Painted Bride; I went to the Nuyorican. Eventually my travels brought me to Serengeti Plains.
I started performing open mic at Serengeti in the fall of 2002. Every second Friday, I would drive up to Serengeti just to get my poetry heard. Nothing was more invigorating than hearing the crowd respond positively when I would do my poem. The more I went, the more people started to treat me like I was a friend. Like I fit in with them. Eventually, Flowmentalz, the host of the New Jersey Slam, encouraged me to enter into the slam. I entered my first slam in March of 2003. I was asked to perform a feature on the last Friday in April. Felicia, the coordinator of Serengeti, gave me twenty minutes to perform my poetry for the crowd. The place loved it. And it was one of the most inspiring and emotional things I have ever done. I'll never forget the experience. I can't imagine any greater joy than how I felt that night. I felt like I was Ainsley Burrows. I won my first slam in May. I Still don't know how I won with the competition I was up against. Flowmentalz and Myra were so good that night. But it got me into the New Jersey Finals. Check out my diary to see where my stories go from there