This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.

I'm Lizzie Peabody.

Reggie Kabiko is a poet. That's his job. But he's not your usual two roads diverged

in a yellow wood kind of poet. Reggie is a spoken word poet.

In a competitive context,

Reggie's craft is known as slam poetry.

And if you're like me, you might not really

know what slam poetry sounds like.

So here's a selection from Reggie, performing his poetry in a TED Talk.

As soon as my poetry came out, I came out. It's one thing to be straight acting, but when I'm writing,

I can't lie. I have been mistaken for Tibetan in Manhattan, Peruvian in Queens, Japanese at the Black Pride

Parade, Chichi from Scarface, I have been Bombay in my father's barrios of Pangasinan, every lift driver's six degrees of separation,

and that guy on lost.

On stage, Reggie's talent for crafting and delivering poetic experiences earned him a lot of recognition.

He earned top prizes in the 1993, 94, and 97 national poetry slams.

His work has been featured in more than 30 anthologies.

He appeared twice on the HBO series Deaf Poetry Jam. And this, Capigo is MCing and performing in the Smithsonian's

Asian Pacific American Literature Festival, which is an annual celebration bringing Asian American literature to the Smithsonian.

The very concept of slam poetry feels boundary breaking.

It's a format that brings together two things that might not seem like they belong together, poetry, and competition.

And Reggie offers this advice to aspiring slam poets.

If you don't know what you're right, write a poem, things you could never tell your mother things you could never

...