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HBO sits down with Def Poet Rafael Casal . . .
HBO:
How did you get into writing poetry?
Rafael Casal:
I got into writing poetry at my high school. I just started writing one day out of frustration of things that were going on in my life, and I needed to get them out somehow. So I picked up a pen and started writing in my school notebook - whatever I was feeling, whatever I felt needed to be said, to a mass of people.
HBO:
How would you describe your poetic style?
Rafael Casal:
My poetic style is very hip-hop influenced. I push a lot of my words out at once, and my style is very lyrical, very rhyme-based. I came up in Hip Hop, so everything is rhyme scheme, the last word rhymes with this one, and a lot of energy, busting, spitting hard.
HBO:
Where's your favorite place to write?
Rafael Casal:
There's a place in Berkley, California at the top of the hill - it's called Indian Rock. You can see the whole bay there. So I like to just to sit there with my notepad and write until I can't write anymore. I write for hours there in the middle of the night, two in the morning, that stuff.
HBO:
What about the strangest place you've ever written a poem?
Rafael Casal:
Strangest place I've ever written a poem... I wrote a poem in the bathroom of an airplane once, just because the guy next to me had earphones on and they were real loud. I couldn't focus, so I went in there and sat down for the whole flight and just wrote probably like two or three pieces, in the stall.
HBO:
So how do you know when you've nailed a poem, and what does it feel like when you put that pen down?
Rafael Casal:
I know I've nailed a poem when I'm at the end of the page and I put the pen down and I read it back to myself -- and I can hear the audience's reaction a few days later in the show, before I've even performed it. When I finish reading the poem in my room in the mirror, and I'm just like, yeah, this is the one, this is the poem. People are going to feel me on this one.
HBO:
Why did you want to be a part of Def Poetry?
Rafael Casal:
I want to be a part of Def Poetry because the whole point of spoken word is getting your message and your voice out to as many people as possible, because you feel like you have something you have to say. And Def Poetry gives poets an avenue to put their words out there for everyone to hear.
HBO:
What do you think about being among the company of some of the great Def Poets of the past?
Rafael Casal:
Man, there are some amazing people in the VIP room of Def Poetry. To be around those kinds of artists, who touch so many people - it's just dope to just be around them, just to get to see them perform, face to face, or in the audience, or get to shake their hand back stage. It's an amazing feeling.
HBO:
Tell us about some of the poets you admire.
Rafael Casal:
I admire a lot of the poets that I came up around. I came up behind Beau Sia, Mark Mamunte Joseph has always been a favorite of mine. Who else? Saul Williams of course. Dahlak Brathwaite - this is his first time on this season, but he's got to be one of my favorite poets of all time. And of course Mos Def, who's hosting the show. [LAUGHS]
HBO:
Can you tell us a little about the piece you read tonight?
Rafael Casal:
My piece is about body image. It's about the effect it has on men and women. I feel like every time poems get done about body image, it's always women giving out their message about the effects that it has on them, and men don't ever stand up and talk about it. So my poem is a man's voice saying what's wrong with the media's manipulation of women and body image.
HBO:
What do you want the audience to take away from the piece?
Rafael Casal:
I want women to leave knowing that even though the poem is not a solution, that men aren't all pretending that it doesn't exist -- that there are men who realize that it is a problem. And it's more just the acknowledgement that it is a problem for everyone. And I want people to leave understanding that the next generation is coming up with this knowledge that there are things that need to be fixed.
HBO:
What inspired the piece?
Rafael Casal:
What inspired the piece? It's a really weird story, you sure you want me to tell it? [LAUGHS] Okay, I was at a slam in Oakland, and there's a little girl named Zoë who reads there - she's nine years old. And it's Oakland, it's really crazy, so weird stuff goes on over there. She read a poem earlier in the night about how Barbie makes her nine-year-old self insecure about her looks. I ended up winning the slam, and the prize for me winning was a Barbie on a trophy - that she had put a nail through. And I put it on my desk at home. I just thought it was funny, and people kept commenting on it. And I took a lot from her poem, and took a lot from the metaphor that is Barbie. I felt like, this needs to come from me, because I'm onstage all the time. Not enough people are going to hear nine-year-old Zoë read her poem, so I want to do my version.
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