Robbie Q. Telfer

Editor’s note: With so much of the publishing industry focused on the coasts, Chicago writers often make a name for themselves at readings in dive bars, small theaters and the like. This week, we profile a writer who finds an audience on the stage.

Robbie Q. Telfer’s “Another Chicago Poem” begins with a little call and response with our fair city. “When will you realize that the graffiti is a gift?” he asks, and then answers, “Perhaps when we realize that the hyper segregation you gave us is a gift too— / a shitty one.”

You won’t find another poet haunting the bars and coffee shops with as much humor in his verse as Telfer. A regular at the city’s slam staples like Mental Graffiti and The Green Mill’s Uptown Poetry Slam, Telfer has a seasoned comedian’s presence on stage, at once unassuming and unpredictable. When we saw him read from “Another Chicago Poem,” he volleyed a rhythmic barrage of adjectives at the city, and followed with “I miss you when I’m gone but ne’er do I pine / because no one pines anymore.”

“Slam is often hip-hop–focused, but I don’t come from that tradition,” says Telfer, on the phone from his job as performances manager for Young Chicago Authors. “The tradition I come from is stand-up comedy, which has its own rhythm.”

Telfer, 27, must have stand-up in his blood. His brother, Dan, is a successful comic in town—he performs in the standout show Impress These Apes and placed third in TOC’s Funniest Person in Chicago contest. And Telfer is unabashed in his desire to mix poetry and comedy.“Definitely, with some of my funnier poems I pull directly from my favorite comedians,” he says. “In one poem in particular I can trace where I was thinking about the Simpsons, South Park, Patton Oswalt and David Cross as I was writing it.”

Not your standard list of poetic influences, which recalls an ongoing argument in the poetry community, a community that loves arguments. Can something like what Telfer does—funny, performance-based poetry—actually be considered poetry?

“My definition of poetry is an open one,” he says. “The poet Kenneth Koch talks about poetry as its own language, that you have to learn the rules of, in order to communicate in it. So performance poetry is the language of performance attached to the language of poetry. It’s up to the individual performer to use whatever parts of those languages fit their needs.”

Catch Telfer’s brand of comic poetry any Sunday at the Uptown Poetry Slam at the Green Mill.