dre poetic: words by adrien salazar

Friends, you may be wondering what series of cosmic blessings and good fortune have collided into this moment to lead up to the debut of this website.

1. shoutout to caitlin meissner

More than a week ago I met magical New York poet, Caitlin Meissner, for a brief lunch in the middle of the financial district in Manhattan. I had a turkey sandwich and she read me some of her poetry. She asked to hear my poetry. Unfortunately I had none at hand. Then she asked if I had a website and I said I didn’t to which she replied “you have to get a website!” and in that moment, the connection between two creative spirits, I was convinced.

2. my performance cherry

I’ve performed many times at events, in front of large and small crowds, mostly in classrooms and campus spaces, actually all at UC Berkeley, my recent alma mater. I’m very comfortable performing in front of a college student audience. But I never performed in a public venue until just a little over a week ago when comedian and close family friend Kevin Nadal asked me to perform at this month’s Sulu Series event: “A Queer Asian Spectacular (In Honor of L.G.B.T. Pride Month)” at the Bowery Poetry Club in the Village.

The event featured not only Kevin Nadal, but poets Justin Woo, Tamiko Beyer, and Kay Barrett, musician Vik Mishra, and emceed by one Danny Katz, master of folk renditions of songs like Missy E’s Work it.

I performed two poems, a poem from my “meditations” series, and “queer me.” After the performance a man came up to me and introduced himself as the host of a local public radio program on WBAI 99.5 FM and asked to record me for his program!

The gods open up the heavens and reveal to me the world at my fingertips–unfortunately my flight out was the next morning so I could do nothing more than grab his business card and give him my email.

“It’s okay it doesn’t have to be tomorrow, you come in and out of town right?” he asked.
“I’ll be back for sure,” I said.

It makes sense to me to start this now.

and finally,

3. The illest industry insider resource blog by Paloma Belara, publicist for ill-literacy spoken word collective

Today published a post, the basics, detailing a list of internet sites one should have a presence on to get coverage, and behold:

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5. YOUR BLOG! *the most important space “
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direct everyone to your blog for up to date news, info, etc, your online social life will become streamlined, and save you A LOT of time!

While the latter mentioned item I found ex post facto of the creation of this site, it is only the continued echoes of the signs from the universe to me that now is the time!

So in the words of one of my favorite people in the world, Patricia Carino, allow me to be introduced:

“World, Adrien.
Adrien, world.”