This is the official blog of Northern Arizona slam poet Christopher Fox Graham. Begun in 2002, and transferred to blogspot in 2006, FoxTheBlog has recorded more than 670,000 hits since 2009. This blog cover's Graham's poetry, the Arizona poetry slam community and offers tips for slam poets from sources around the Internet. Read CFG's full biography here. Looking for just that one poem? You know the one ... click here to find it.
Showing posts with label Arizona. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arizona. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Where to find Sedona's four vortices/vortexes

 Being Sedona residents, we get asked about where the vortices / vortexes are all the time.

Here are the four. Some folks who will swindle tourists out of money will claim there are more only they know about but none of them are universally recognized as these four are. That said, they're pretty and offer nice vistas, but there is nothing inherently special about any of them other that what people claim without evidence that they feel.

Sedona Airport Vortex (on the outcroping to the northeast)

Bell Rock Vortex, the exact location is -- unsurprisingly -- unclear.

Boynton Canyon Vortex, overlooks Enchantment Resort

Cathedral Rock Vortex, like the Bell Rock Vortex, the exact location is unsurprisingly unclear.


Friday, May 6, 2022

Sedona Poetry Slam hosts final slam of season Saturday, May 14, at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre


The Sedona Poetry Slam has reached the final slam of the season before the summer break Saturday, May 14. Performance poets will bring high-energy, competitive spoken word to the Mary D. Fisher Theatre starting at 7:30 p.m.

If you have told your friends you were going to attend a poetry slam this year, but haven't yet, this is your last chance to see what you've been anticipating.

A poetry slam is like a series of high-energy, three-minute one-person plays, judged by the audience. Anyone can sign up to compete in the slam for the $75 grand prize and $25 second-place prize. To compete in the slam, poets will need three original poems, each lasting no longer than three minutes. No props, costumes nor musical accompaniment are permitted. The poets are judged Olympics-style by five members of the audience selected at random at the beginning of the slam.


Slam poetry is an art form that allows written page poets to share their work alongside theatrical performers, hip-hop artists and lyricists. Poets come from as far away as Phoenix, Tucson and Flagstaff, competing against adult poets from Sedona and Cottonwood, college poets from Northern Arizona University and youth poets from Sedona Red Rock High School. All types of poetry are welcome on the stage, from street-wise hip-hop and narrative performance poems, to political rants and introspective confessionals. Any poem is a "slam" poem if performed in a competition. All poets get three minutes per round to entertain and inspire the audience with their creativity.

Mary D. Fisher Theatre is located at 2030 W. SR 89A, Suite A-3, in West Sedona. Tickets are $12. For tickets, call 282-1177 or visit SedonaFilmFestival.org.

The Sedona Poetry Slam will return for its 14th season the fall.


The prize money is funded in part by a donation from Verde Valley poetry supporters Jeanne and Jim Freeland.

Email foxthepoet@yahoo.com to sign up early to compete or by the Friday before the slam or at the door the day of the slam. Poets who want to compete should purchase a ticket in case the roster is filled before they arrive.

For more information, visit sedonafilmfestival.com or foxthepoet.blogspot.com.


What is Poetry Slam?

Founded at the Green Mill Tavern in Chicago in 1984 by Marc Smith, poetry slam is a competitive artistic sport designed to get people who would otherwise never go to a poetry reading excited about the art form when it becomes a high-energy competition. Poetry slams are judged by five randomly chosen members of the audience who assign numerical value to individual poets' contents and performances.


Poetry slam has become an international artistic sport, with more than 100 major poetry slams in the United States, Canada, Australia and Western Europe. Slam poets have opened at the Winter Olympics, performed at the White House and at the United Nations General Assembly and were featured on "Russell Simmons' Def Poets" on HBO.

Sedona has sent four-poet teams to represent the city at the National Poetry Slam in Charlotte, N.C., Boston, Cambridge, Mass., Oakland, Calif., Decatur, Ga., Denver and Chicago. 

Sunday, August 25, 2013

I am the new managing editor of the Sedona Red Rock News, The Camp Verde Journal, and the Cottonwood Journal Extra

Larson Newspapers announces the promotion of News Editor Christopher Fox Graham to managing editor.

Photo by Saar Ingelbert
Graham first worked for Larson Newspapers as a copy editor from 2004 to 2008 and was named Editorial Person of the Year in 2004. During his tenure, he wrote more than 100 Sedona Underground columns featuring profiles of artists and performers around Sedona.

Graham returned as assistant news editor in October 2009. He was promoted to assistant managing editor in April 2010 and again promoted to news editor in April 2013 ....  Click here for the full story.

He can be contacted at editor@larsonnewspapers.com.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Arizona will name a Poet Laureate: Let's nominate Phoenix poet Bill Campana

The state of Arizona will name a Poet Laureate in 2013. Let's make sure it's Bill Campana, a prolific poet, veteran slammer and everyone's favorite uncle.

I will be writing a nomination as a representative of the Sedona slam scene. Other slam poets have offered to do the same. Join us.

Why should Bill Campana be Arizona's Poet Laureate?


Before Campana blazed into the Mesa and Phoenix poetry scene in 1997, individuals would attend poetry readings and at the end of every dry, polished piece of mental origami, read with all the flair of a zoning law variance, those still awake in the audience would say "humph." Poets would get a smattering of courtesy applause, and everyone would go home feeling just a little more cultured than their neighbors who owned television sets.

Campana, however, knows that the only true way to respect culture is to break it into little tiny pieces. He came onto the poetry scene at full power, and suddenly the dry dusty notebooks of lesser poets got burned up in the shockwave.

Campana is the atom bomb that levels ivory towers. He got people excited enough about poetry to come back for more, and to see what would happen next. Soon, the audience was too big for the coffeehouse, a feat unprecedented since Socrates dared the baristas to make him a hemlock frappuchino.
Campana began writing poetry at the age of 17, quit at 22 because he realized that he had nothing to say. Twenty years later, he picked up where he left off, soon ran out of things to say again but has not stopped writing.

A member of five Mesa National Poetry Slam Teams, Campana has been to the semi-finals of the National Poetry Slam twice. He has hosted and featured across the Southwest, and continues to write at a feverish pace, always challenging fellow poets to better their craft on the page and the stage.

Campana takes elements of other art forms and applies them to his poetry. Although audiences can't hear the music, he insists it's in there in tributes to composition. Although audiences can't see the paintings and photographs they are there behind the words. Campana currently lives on the fine line that separates the page from the stage. From there he can reach people from both spectrums of modern poetry.

Campana runs the weekly Sound Effects poetry open mic called in Phoenix.

Campana also recently released a compilation album, "The Hit List," that features 94 poems composed over the last 10 years of his performance career in Phoenix.

His work has also been made into a short film:




A young lady visits a piercing parlor and gets more than she bargained for.


Directed by Matt Gismondi
Poem and Voiceover by Bill Campana
Starring David Tabor and Lauren Perry

Arizona Poet Laureate


The Arizona Commission on the Arts, an agency of the State of Arizona, today launches the nomination process for the inaugural Arizona Poet Laureate.

At the start of the last legislative session, Arizona was one of only 8 states without a poet laureate. The Arts Commission and the Arizona literary community worked in close partnership with State Senator Al Melvin during the Fiftieth Legislature’s second regular session, to put forth a bill establishing a poet laureate post for the State of Arizona. On May 11, 2012, Governor Jan Brewer signed SB1348 into law, and October marks the beginning of the nomination, review and selection process.


Jaime Dempsey, Deputy Director of the Arts Commission, said of the process, “It is our hope that the appointed Arizona Poet Laureate will champion the art of American poetry, inspire an emerging generation of literary artists, and educate Arizonans about poets and authors who have influenced our state through creative literary expression.”
The bill specifies that the appointed poet laureate will serve a term of two years; will offer public readings throughout the year, in both urban and rural communities in various regions of the state; and will pursue a major literary project over the course of the appointment term.

The Arizona Poet Laureate will be provided with an annual honorarium of $2,500 to offset travel and so that he/she is able to actively serve the broadest constituency of Arizonans, who live, learn and work in urban, rural and suburban areas of the state. The honorarium will be disbursed from the Arizona Poet Laureate Fund, which consists of private monies donated by individuals, organizations or businesses – raised by the Arts Commission and its statewide literary partners.

Interested parties may nominate themselves or others for the position of Arizona Poet Laureate through a process managed by the Arizona commission on the Arts. The initial deadline for nominations is November 9, 2012. To review details and information regarding the nomination/application and selection process, visit http://www.azarts.gov/azpoetlaureate.

“We would like to recognize and thank Arizona Senator Al Melvin, who introduced the bill and shepherded it through the legislative process, and to our partners in arts advocacy, the Arizona Citizens for the Arts for helping to see this bill through to success,” said Bob Booker, Executive Director. 

Read the bill, here

About the Arizona Commission on the Arts

One of 56 state and jurisdictional arts agencies across the United States, the Arizona Commission on the Arts is an agency of the State of Arizona that supports a statewide arts network. The Arizona Commission on the Arts supports access to quality arts and arts education opportunities for all Arizona citizens; the development and retention of statewide jobs in the nonprofit arts, culture and education sectors; and increased economic impact in local communities through arts-based partnerships that develop tax and small business revenue.

For more information about the grants, services and programs of the Arizona Commission on the Arts, visit www.azarts.gov.

We imagine an Arizona where everyone can participate in and experience the arts.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Vamp Syllabus at GumptionFest VI



Photo by Beth Robbins Nelson
Vamp Syllabus with Mike Leibowitz, left, Dylan Jung, Matt Barlow and Philip Robbins playing GumptionFest VI on Saturday, Sept. 17, 2011.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

If the Beastie Boys Were Narcoleptic Haiku



Teresa Newkirk performs the best (and most painful) haiku at the third annual GumptionFest Haiku Death Match. Teresa went on to win the haiku slam.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

What You Don't Know About the Sub Sandwich You Want Delivered


KuK, a master delivery driver for a sub shop in Tempe, Ariz., waxes poetic about the ethic of delivery drivers and the importance of bending traffic laws for the betterment of society as a whole.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

"Staring at the Milky Way With One Eye Closed" anew

I'm working on two new chapbooks. Took some self-portraits last night for one poem with I really liked. The new photos and the old poem:

Staring at the Milky Way With One Eye Closed
26 Sept. 2006-15 May 2007

Staring at the Milky Way with one eye closed
details in the clouds of shapes elude pinpointing
the brightest ones egotistically outshine their humble siblings
burning their age-old sociology over distance and time
only now reaching my half-blind awareness

if I lay still for an hour
the whole sky rotates enough for me to feel
the morning hours away
but for now, the night holds sway
that dark Earth below holds its secrets
coyotes yelp in their hide-and-seeks between the lights
marking the miles between irrelevant cities

I haven’t seen shooting stars in months
and the eager sky readily supplies signal flares on the periphery
as if they lamented my absence too

but in the tender brilliance of falling stars
sending goodbyes to satellites
stereoscopic disability flattens everything into two dimensions

denied depth, the hazy constellations stand near enough
to reach out and reorder as if i spilled them on velvet
i reached up with both hands
and gazed at each one through my fingers
and pretended for a moment i was god,
and I remember feeling this childlike before ...

although the days tick by in perfect chronological sequence
the specks above tonight measure the same distance apart as always
and the constellations remain impervious
to our rearrangements, reinterpretations and renamings

you see, I learned all their names once
at the same time I was structuring the proper order of the alphabet
my father, raised in a family too poor to afford telescopes,
would relate the stories of each one as we lay on the roof
cheaper than television
we shared the stars

he explained how geometric shape of hunter, virgin and beast
came to rise from earthly mothers
into Greek mythology
and into the heavenly bodies
we still use to find our way home

what stories he had heard at the same age I was
and remembered until he had a son
and which ones he manufactured at the moment
to keep my childish attention skyward
I’m still uncertain because I lost him years ago

but taken from this soil
and raised into the cosmos for a night
I sailed on the satellite of his voice into the exosphere
as he surreptitiously showed me
how all science fiction writers
came to dream their space opera epics

you see, their fathers instilled in them
the dream of sailing between

the Dark Side

and the Light

but the distance between stars is not measured in parsecs
but in the imagination of a boy thinking his father is godlike
because if you tilt your head ... just so
and remember that even angels
paint connect-the-dots pictures
the clump to the right in the shape of an arrow
with the semi-circle that arcs out from the side
really does look like a hunter
if you believe the man who tells you it does
and when he asks
if you can see it
for the first time in your young life
the way you see the world actually matters to someone
because it means he’s doing the right thing

“Yes, dad, I see the hunter,
he chases through the clouds and gases hiding in the shadows and staying downwind of his prey.
You can tell by the way the Milky Way is drifting to the Southwest tonight”

and in the stars I had my father
he told me the stories of the placement
and calculated the precise mathematics:
“These two stars will always be the distance between two fingers.”
“That constellation is always the breadth of one palm,
if you stretch out your thumb to touch that star first.”

the measurements in the heavens never change
because they give us a path home
despite the distance we grow from it
I wish I had known that then,
because I would have told that boy
to place his father somewhere in the heavens
so that he would forever know
the number of steps it takes to find him
but this rotating world
hides the stars behind the sun for half a day
and in the daylight
my father found a place to hide from me
so now I can’t even find him in the night

I still have the stars and the stories
but the man who taught them to me
disappeared into them both
so never ask me again why I don’t believe in God
look to the stars,
find him,
sketch out what points define his shape
and point him out to a boy still on a rooftop
tell him you can see god
in the geometry of random placement
because to me, today
those shape are just specks
I know anyone can rename the constellations
the measurements above never change
but we don’t learn from their loyalty
how to live
so if you find a man who looks like me
with twenty more revolutions on his face
lying on a rooftop, measuring the distance between stars with his fingers
tell him to stop counting
because the mathematics of the constellations never change
no matter how many satellites we send up to double-check
it’s the people down below who grow apart
and most never find a way back home

but sometimes there are boys
who remember they way fathers could be godlike
when they were too young
and too stupid to know any better

but on some nights like these,
when that boy,
now this poet
gazes skyward with one eye open
he imagines that his father is alongside him
and for a while,
before his vision gets hazy
a certain mass of glowing dots
really does look like a hunter
heading back across the heavens
to teach his son
everything he knows
about hunting stars

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Utah Arts Festival Team Poetry Slam, part two


Nick Shifrar Team 801 Underground, the Salt Lake City pickup team
Dominique Christina Ashaheed and Ayinde Russell from Denver's Slam NUBA with a poem about the use of music in fighting South African Apartheid.

DeAnn Emett, from the Salt City Slam, performing a poem about a murdered friend that only escalated in intensity as the poem went on. By the end, I thought her passion would burst a an artery.

My Tombstone Poets Slam Team captain, Lauren Perry, closing up our rotation as the first poet of the final round. Aaron Johnson, The Klute and I, having all been team captains before, came to Salt Lake with Lauren so she could have a go at calling the rotations and work on her slam team strategizing.





Tara Brenner, from team Boise, proclaiming her love of vampires, the real kind of Count Dracula/Court Orlok-type seducers, not pansy-ass Edward "Twilight" Cullen "I mourn my lost humanity and don't want to ravish you" vampires.

Host Dave McKnight

Jesse Parent and Cody Winger, from Salt City Slam.


Poet from 801 Underground, the Salt Lake City pickup team



Brando Chemtrails from team Slam NUBA





Round 1
Salt City Slam, Salt Lake City: Gray Brian, 29.0
801 Underground, Salt Lake City: Adam Love and Nick Shifrar, 28.5
Slam NUBA, Denver:
Tombstone Poets, Phoenix: Aaron Johnson, "Lightning" 29.4
Boise, Idaho: Cheryl Maddalena, 29.8

Round 2
801 Underground, Salt Lake City: 27.8
Slam NUBA, Denver: Brando Chemtrails, Ayinde Russell, Dominique Christina Ashaheed, Theo Wilson and Jovan Mays, 29.4
Tombstone Poets, Phoenix: Christopher Fox Graham, "Spinal Language" 28.6
Boise, Idaho: Brenda Ray, 29.3
Salt City Slam, Salt Lake City: Jesse Parent, Cody Winger, DeAnn Emett and Gary Brian, "I Am Legion," 30.0

Round 3
Slam NUBA, Denver: Ayinde Russell and Dominique Christina Ashaheed, 29.9
Tombstone Poets, Phoenix: The Klute, Aaron Johnson (beatboxing), Christopher Fox Graham, "Hip-Hop Republican," 30.0
Boise, Idaho: Leah Cronen, 28.5
Salt City Slam, Salt Lake City: DeAnn Emett, 29.6
801 Underground, Salt Lake City: Nick Shifrar, 29.5

Round 4
Tombstone Poets, Phoenix: Lauren Perry, 28.4
Boise, Idaho: Tara Brenner, 29.9
Salt City Slam, Salt Lake City: Jesse Parent and Cody Winger, 29.5
801 Underground, Salt Lake City: 28.5
Slam NUBA, Denver: Brando Chemtrails, 30.0



Final Scores
Slam NUBA, Denver: 119.3
Salt City Slam, Salt Lake City: 118.1
Boise, Idaho: 117.5
Tombstone Poets, Phoenix: 116.4
801 Underground: 114.3

Monday, June 27, 2011

Utah Arts Festival Team Poetry Slam, part one

The old Utah State House where the 2011 Utah Arts Festival tooks place.

The Big Mouth Cafe slam stage.

Brian Frandsen, the calibration poet.

Dave McShield, the shirtless host.

Gray Brian with the first poem of the first round, a beautiful poem about reversing time. Set the stage for the whole rest of the slam.

Adam Love, left, and Nick Shifrar Team 801 Underground, the Salt Lake City pickup team.

Cheryl Maddalena with her "MILF" poem. She is a beautiful human being. It clearly says so on her left arm in 200pt Times New Roman.
Brenda Ray, team Boise

Salt City Slam performing Jesse Parent's "I Am Legion" poem about his mother's multiple personality discover. This is the piece that fucked my ears with its brilliance. The poets are Parent, left, Cody Winger, DeAnn Emett and Gary Brian.


Slam NUBA, featuring Brando Chemtrails, left, Ayinde Russell (behind Brando), Dominique Christina Ashaheed, Theo Wilson and Jovan Mays.

Leah Cronen from Team Boise