Six poets on the fast track

The warmup act is a DJ who’s spinning Chuck D, A Tribe Called Quest and other rappers at the Knitting Factory. On this weeknight, the main-stage headliners -- not music, not comedy, guess again -- have sold out the sleek Hollywood club, which offers Internet stations and a candlelit balcony for guests with a certain wristband. Lights dim. The crowd surges.

The poets are in the house.

Six poets in their 20s and 30s take the stage, the rock stars of an emerging spoken-word scene that merges poetry, hip-hop culture and theater into a polished production package. The ensemble, known as the Underground Poets Railroad, is banking off the popularity of other high-profile spoken-word productions such as the hit show “Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway,” a spinoff of the HBO poetry jam series.

The underground poets recently completed a national tour produced by acclaimed filmmakers Kip and Kern Konwiser, who filmed the eight-day road trip for a documentary. Now, in private workshops in Los Angeles, the Konwiser brothers are inviting industry professionals to pitch in with suggestions on staging and content that could help catapult the show to bigger venues. Plans also are in the works for the group to do another national tour next year and other projects that will be developed with the Konwisers’ partner, Bruce George, executive producer of HBO’s show.

“We believe spoken word is the next major movement in hip-hop culture that will cross over into the mainstream,” said Kern Konwiser, 34. “We’ve seen it happen with rap and fashion and street basketball, and we think spoken word is next.... We want to be part of that trend.”

These days, spoken-word events are hot tickets, with theatergoers willing to pay as much as $65 a pop for the Broadway show or $10 each at the Knitting Factory -- unreal admission prices to poets who usually read at donation-only open-microphone events or poetry slam competitions.

“We sold over 500 tickets to this joint for poetry in a few days,” Kip Konwiser told members of the Knitting Factory audience, who ranged from their 20s to their 50s, wearing an eclectic mix of blue jeans, pearls, knit caps and nose rings. “In Los Angeles.”

The Konwiser brothers, who produced the multiple Emmy-winning HBO movie “Miss Evers’ Boys,” plucked the little-known poets from local venues such as Da’ Poetry Lounge. The lounge, one of the country’s hottest spoken-word events, is held in the Fairfax district at the Greenway Court Theatre, also the breeding ground for Def Poetry performers.

The underground poets ensemble is made up of Steve Connell, Gina Loring, Sekou (Tha Misfit), Jerry Quickley and Jaha Zainabu of the Los Angeles area; and Laura “Piece” Kelly of Seattle. They are poets who are more accustomed to shouting over the whir of coffeehouse blenders than performing at places like the Knitting Factory, where patrons watched the show on video monitors or stood on the dance floor. The recent performance at the Knitting Factory, a benefit for KPFK-FM (90.7), was an encore presentation of the national tour; no other dates are scheduled.

The Knitting Factory’s national booking director, John Pantle, said he wouldn’t hesitate to book the underground poets again. “It’s a fantastic synergy of art forms ... and a genre that is underappreciated in the Los Angeles market,” he said. “We hope to become a catalyst to do more of these events.”

The Konwisers came up with the underground poets concept at the request of Green Bay Packers defensive end Joe Johnson, who had asked them to develop a project to pay tribute to the 12 African American firefighters who died in the Sept. 11 attacks. Proceeds from the sale of TV rights for the documentary, along with video and CD sales, will go to the families of the firefighters.

Melding Ginsberg and Eminem

On stage, at the Knitting Factory, the poets basked in spotlights that turned amber or periwinkle or watermelon-colored, and in front of a burnt-orange backdrop with the group’s lantern logo. They recited poems individually and together, with the rat-tat delivery of rappers (except these are poets, and you can understand every word) or the soulful lyricism of Alicia Keys.

They pranced, Eminem-style, or they chanted in a Greek chorus drone, accompanied by a five-piece jazz group. They pumped their fists in the air and ranted, with the same fire and swagger of Allen Ginsberg and Lenny Bruce, touching on topics of love and war and the importance of airing voices in any military action against Iraq.

In the opening number, the group, standing at microphones, hummed and whispered and echoed the prose of Connell, who wore jeans and an untucked collared shirt, as his voice rose to a blistering pitch: “Thoughts will jabber about for lifetimes and, if their forms cannot be fastened in prose, then their form will take shape elsewise. They will come out.... You cannot kill a poet.”

After the 75-minute show, the crowd erupted in applause. Some reached up to the stage to hug or shake hands with the poets. “I thought it was raw, in your face, like, ‘Wake up!’ ” said Chuck Crook, 40, a meditation teacher in Malibu. “I felt like I was in a march.... I got my heart, my humanity back.”

Later, underground poet (Tha Misfit), 30, said he loves the feel of a professional show and doesn’t worry about alienating his core audience, the poetry fans who prefer the indie vibe of small, bare-bones performances. “We are the core audience,” he said of the underground poets. At a bigger venue, with proper lighting, “you can capture the mood. You can capture the theatrical element.... You really have all the dynamics going. Light and sound, a little reverb, the band playing. You can really capture the essence of the poetry.”

He and the rest of the group, including Loring, 24, stuck around after the show to sign their CDs. “It’s really nice to be taken seriously,” Loring said. “This really allows us to be literally in the spotlight. That’s what poetry deserves.” She apologized for having to break away from a conversation. Her manager kept pulling her away. He had people for her to meet.

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‘When I Grow Up’

An excerpt from a poem by Sekou (Tha Misfit):

Ask me now mommy. Am I too late? Ask me now what I want to do for a living. Am I too late? Cause I think I finally figured it out.

I don’t want to do for a living,

I want to be for a living.

I want to be life.

I want to make things grow, and move, and breathe, and reproduce and respond.

I just want to make things respond, and react, and rejoice, and remember, and relax, and relate, and release, and receive, and reform, and revere, and reflect and rejuvenate soon as I recite.

When I grow up,

I don’t want to be like those other kids’ mommy who want to be firemen and doctors and astronauts.

I want to be passion, and heat and energy.

When I grow up,

I don’t want to be a fireman mommy, let me be the fire.