Monday, April 22, 2024

A00200 - Maggie Estep, Spoken Word and Poetry Slam Performer

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Margaret Ann "Maggie" Estep (b. March 20, 1963, Summit, New Jersey – February 12, 2014, Albany, New York) was an American writer and poet, best known for coming to prominence during the height of the spoken word and poetry slam performance rage. She published seven books and released two spoken word albums: No More Mr. Nice Girl and Love is a Dog From Hell.Margaret Ann Estep was born in 1963 in Summit, New Jersey. As a poet, she emerged in the early 1990s when grunge was the height of fashion and her "direct, aggressive and uncompromisingly modern"[2] poetry was highly accessible.

Estep appeared on Lollapalooza's third stage in 1994, and featured on MTV's Spoken Word Unplugged,[3] PBS's The United States of Poetry,[4] and most recently on Season 3 of HBO's Def Poetry. Her video for her spoken word track "Hey Baby" received moderate rotation on MTV and was highlighted on MTV's Beavis & Butt-head.[5] She also contributed vocals to two songs on Recoil's 1997 album Unsound Methods.[6] In 2003 she wrote sleevenotes for the Talking Heads box set Once in a Lifetime.[7]

Estep went on to write many novels, including Diary of an Emotional Idiot, the Ruby Murphy mystery trilogy, Gargantuan, Hex and Flamethrower, and Alice Fantastic. Hex was named New York Times Notable Book for 2003.[8] She had, for several years, been at work on The Angelmakers, a novel about 19th Century female gangsters and the founding of animal rights.[9]

Estep suffered a heart attack on February 10, 2014, at her home in Hudson, New York, and died from complications two days later in an Albany hospital, aged 50. She was survived by her mother and three half-siblings.[10]

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Maggie Estep, Who Brought Slam Poetry to TV, Dies at 50

By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK
Inside
    Maggie Estep presenting her work onstage in 1993. In addition to poetry she wrote several mystery novels set in New York. Kevin Mazur/MTV
    Maggie Estep, a novelist and spoken-word poet who helped popularize slam poetry on MTV, HBO and PBS in the 1990s, died on Wednesday in Albany. She was 50.
    Ms. Estep (pronounced EST-ep) died two days after having a heart attack at her home in Hudson, N.Y., a friend, John Rauchenberger, said.
    An East Village bohemian when the neighborhood contained more discarded syringes than million-dollar condos, Ms. Estep became a regular at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, one of the incubators of the slam poetry movement. Slam poetry combines aspects of a live reading, a rap battle and stand-up comedy, as performers try to win over the audience with wit, braggadocio and, occasionally, nuance.
    Ms. Estep’s poetry was characterized by gritty honesty, black humor and a post-punk brand of feminism. She became one of the form’s breakout stars, performing in showcases like MTV’s “Unplugged,” the “Free Your Mind” spoken-word tour in 1993 and, in 1994, the music festivals Lollapalooza and Woodstock ’94.
    Her poems, which she delivered relentlessly, were a cascade of images, often tinged with absurdity, violence and innuendo. She performed one scathingly sarcastic poem, “Happy,” on the HBO show “Russell Simmons’s Def Poetry Jam”:
    To hell with sticking my head in the oven
    I’m happy
    I’m ridiculously, vengefully happy
    I’m ripped apart by sunshine
    I’m ecstatic
    I’m leaping
    I’m cutting off all my limbs
    I’m doing circus tricks with forks
    She recorded two spoken-word albums with rock accompaniment, “No More Mr. Nice Girl” (NuYo/Imago, 1994) and “Love Is a Dog From Hell” (Mouth Almighty/Mercury, 1997). Her fame increased when a video for her song “Hey Baby” was mocked on “Beavis and Butt-head.” The song centers on Ms. Estep’s bizarre rejoinder to an amorous man on a New York street, and ends with this exchange:
    “What’s the matter, baby?
    You got something against men?” He asks.
    “No,” I say
    “I don’t have anything against men,
    just stupid men.”
    Margaret Ann Estep was born on March 20, 1963, in Summit, N.J. Her parents were racehorse trainers, and she grew up in Canada, France, Colorado and Georgia. She dropped out of high school in her late teens and moved to Manhattan.
    “I fell in love with New York City one day in 1971, when I saw dozens of people blithely stepping over a dead body on a sidewalk,” Ms. Estep wrote in “Think of This as a Window,” an essay about finally leaving the city.
    She worked briefly as a go-go dancer, joined the punk scene and became addicted to heroin. She took up fiction writing at a drug rehabilitation clinic in the mid-1980s.
    In 1986 she attended a class taught by William S. Burroughs at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colo. She studied there for two years and eventually received a bachelor’s degree in literature from the State University of New York.
    She published several books, including mystery novels set in New York City and “Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals,” which includes her spoken-word work. She moved to Hudson from Brooklyn several years ago.
    Ms. Estep regularly kept a blog. Her final entry, about stripping and friendship, appeared on Feb. 7.
    She is survived by her mother, Nancy Murray; two half-brothers, Jon and Chris Murray; and a half-sister, Ellen Murray.
    Although Ms. Estep became famous as a performer, she said she always considered herself primarily a writer.
    “I was a writer long before I performed, and my work is very much for the page as well as the stage,” she told The San Jose Mercury News in 1994.
    “I sent my stuff out to the quarterlies and it came back with arrogant notes,” she added. “Now, they come to me.”
     
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    Maggie Estep (March 20, 1963 – February 12, 2014) was an American writer and poet most well known for coming to prominence during the height of the spoken word and poetry slam performance rage. She published seven books and released two spoken word albums: No More Mr. Nice Girl and Love is a Dog From Hell.


    Biography[edit]

    Estep was born in 1963 in Summit, New Jersey. As a poet, she emerged in the early 1990s when grunge was the height of fashion and her "direct, aggressive and uncompromisingly modern"[2] poetry was highly accessible.
    Estep appeared on MTV's Spoken Word Unplugged,[3] PBS's The United States of Poetry,[4] and most recently on Season 3 of HBO's Def Poetry. Her video for her spoken word track "Hey Baby" received moderate rotation on MTV and was highlighted on MTV's Beavis & Butt-head. She also contributed vocals to two songs on Recoil's 1997 album Unsound Methods.
    Estep went on to write many novels, including Diary of an Emotional Idiot, the Ruby Murphy mystery trilogy, Gargantuan, Hex and Flamethrower, and Alice Fantastic. Hex was named New York Times Notable Book for 2003.[5] She had, for several years, been at work on The Angelmakers, a novel about 19th Century female gangsters and the founding of animal rights.
    Estep suffered a heart attack on February 10, 2014 and died from complications of it on February 12, 2014.[6] She was 50.

    Discography[edit]

    Bibliography[edit]

     

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