Jesus speaks to Geoffrey Watts. Watts speaks to Jesus, too.
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He took what he calls a “faith walk,” stepping off into the unknown to try the unheard-of–making a living as a poet. But for Watts it’s just another phase in an entrepreneurial life. Under the name Dr. Groove, Watts spent years on the south-side hip-hop circuit–he claims to have been the first rapper in Chicago. He deejayed house parties, wrote a column for the Source, recorded a 1982 single, “Super Rock Body Shock,” and says he once mentored a young local rapper who scored a multimillion-dollar major label deal. He doesn’t want to talk about his protege, though, because “I didn’t like the direction rap was going….I had taught him better than that–I call it ‘slop-hop.’”
The conference negotiates the concerns of both body and soul. Workshops on copyright and entertainment law, Web site development, and chapbook and newsletter publishing coexist with those on “praise, worship, and ministry of the arts.” It’s an integration that eludes Watts in other areas of his life, he says, noting “the cliques and the tics” in the predominately north-side spoken-word scene.
Registration for the Gospel Poetry Conference is $75; the general public can sample “tag-team gospel poetry” and other verse forms at the conference’s Gospel Poetry Explosion, which will be held Friday and Saturday, August 15 and 16, from 8:30 PM to 1 AM at the South Shore performance space Luke 4:18, 1720 E. 75th. Admission is free but reservations are required; call 773-727-8800. “There’s no applause between poets because this isn’t about us,” Watts warns. When there’s not a conference going on, members of the Christian Poets Society perform at the Room at the Cross Church, 1432 W. 87th, on the first, third, and fifth Saturday of the month at 3 PM. It’s always free; call 773-684-8058.
