George Watsky: Geeky White Poet

As a fairly geeky white guy, I find myself particularly drawn to other geeky white guys who do cool things. One such geeky white guy is George Watsky.

Watsky has perfected the geek rock image and brought it to the world of performance poetry. He’s hilarious, non-threatening, and he’s appeared on Def Poetry Jam. If only poetry were as popular as rock music, he’d have millions of adoring teenage girls hanging posters of him on their bedroom walls.

Alas, poetry has not yet reached that level of popularity in Western culture, so I’ve got to play the part of the screaming teenage girl here and let you all know about George Watsky and his kick ass poetry.

According to his bio, he’s got a list of achievements to back-up the rock star status I’m throwing upon him:

Watsky was featured on Season 6 of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry on HBO. He was the 2006 Youth Speaks Grand Slam Poetry Champion, 2006 Brave New Voices International Poetry Slam Champion, and performed in a record six consecutive Youth Speaks Grand Slam Finals. The last three of those audiences, all topping out at over 3,000, were the largest ever for poetry slams anywhere in the world. In 2009 Watsky was one of three poets who performed live on FOX at the NAACP Image Awards in honor of Russell Simmons’ lifetime achievement award.

So there you go. George Watsky: geeky white poet. He’s like the Weezer of performance poetry—geeky, but in an awesome rock star kind of way.