Apocalyptic slam poetry in motion

Contemporary poetry performance often suffers from boring pretentiousness, but Aaron Wimmer is waging war on this affliction.

In the candlelit basement lounge of the Chelsea restaurant Elmo, Wimmer curates the work of inexperienced and established poets at one of his Nuclear Poetry events. The highlight is his spoken word project antiPANGAEA, which makes use of audience participation and a background soundtrack of archived news reels.

Nuclear Poetry began as a way for Wimmer and his classmates from a New School poetry workshop to showcase their work at the end of the semester. He had an idea for an open environment where people who had never read could learn from the pros. The turnout was bigger than he expected and has grown with time. At the end of March he wrapped up the fifth Nuclear Poetry event - a physical movement piece set to the music of Grizzly Bear and U2 - and the sixth gathering is set for May.

'It's just kind of like layers upon layers of creative expression,' he said. 'Whether it be visual, whether it be physical, whether it be musical, for me, that's kind of how I see things. In many, many different layers.'

This layered approach of mixing different types of artistic expression comes naturally to him. A thespian in high school in Utah, Wimmer, now 30, was drawn to New York six years ago to perform a three-month stint in an off-Broadway play. He never left. He is now writing a play and credits his first formal writing class, an NYU playwriting workshop, with pushing him onto his current path.

Wimmer's interest in theater, coupled with a love of music, is of more influence to him than structured poetic forms. Inspiration comes from the monologues of plays and bands like Radiohead. On his inner-right forearm is a tattoo of artwork from Radiohead's album 'Kid A.' That record is lauded as experimental for its use of different electronic effects and samples. Wimmer, too, steps out of the norm with antiPANGAEA.

'It's kind of like creating spoken music with the parts, so like a lot of repetition with words. And really, it's poetry, in a theatrical sense,' he said. 'My view on that is, if you hear it in your head and if you hear a guitar or if you hear a bomb exploding or whatever, it's important to get that out and reproduce it.'

He is now organizing a new project that aims to reach out to everyone who thinks they have no voice, from students to people in hospital beds. Those people will then be invited to a mass public reading in Times Square to further spread the message of hope.

Dark apocalyptic themes flow through much of Wimmer's poetry. He wrote his first poem in his late teens. Then, writing became not just a means of creative expression, but one of survival. For a period of time, which he calls the hardest in his life, he struggled with drug addiction. Writing was both a way to get through the drug-induced paranoia and to get clean.

'Writing was something I clung to, and it was my safety,' Wimmer said. 'It was an absolute outlet for the darkness and all things hopeful.'

Wimmer is open in discussing the more difficult times of his life. He wants to give others hope that no matter how bad things seem they are not unfixable. This desire translates into his poems. His poetry represents his own personal struggle as a war but with an optimistic light shining through.

'That's what the nuclear war is,' he said. 'That's why I have my occupation with that in my mind. I feel like I made it through that war. I feel like I kind of am in a bomb shelter of my own. And it's time to come out.'

Amanda Mastrull is a staff writer. E-mail her at music@nyunews.com.

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