The Italian artist Lina Pallotta spent much of the 1990s in New York. She spent most nights in the city’s underground poetry clubs, witnessing the emergence of new forms of performance of spoken word—“slam” poetry. She went to Nuyorican Poets Café, St. Mark’s Church, Fez Café, the Bowery Poetry Club, and others.

On Wednesday and Friday nights, the Nuyorican provided a stage for artists traditionally under-represented in mainstream media and culture and was the cradle of the weekly Poetry Slams Competitions. The poet Bob Holman, the Nuyorican slam-master and founder of the Bowery Poetry Club, once called these events “the democratization of verse.”

What emerged from these performances was a new group of so-called Nuyorican poets—Willie Perdomo, Sapphire, Maggie Estep, Tracie Morris, Dana Bryant, Reg. E. Gaines, Paul Beatty, Edwin Torres, Emanuel Xavier, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Ntozake Shange, Zoraida Santiago, and Keven Powell, Cheryl B., among others.

Faced with the poetic language that was performed, embodied, and intertwined with music, Lina began to take photographs. These timeless images are brought together in her recent book titled Tongue in Flames (1992—2011), published by Nero Editions.

For this event, Lina hosts a conversation between Bob Holman, Janice Erlbaum, and Edwin Torres, who share their reflections on what it was like back then, and what it’s like now.

The project is supported by Strategia Fotografia 2024, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.