Competitor Profile: Ryan McMasters
"Putting walls in poems like everything in third person or talking about a situation rather than using snippets from the conversation have their own merit, but they consistently pale in comparison to the amount of power the line or stanza could have because of the degree of intimacy you are willing to breathe into it."
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Picture a DNA helix
Its ability to
Coil
Twist
Bond
Curve
Connect
Be known
Have a diary of history in every marriage
Unravel
Have components that run in opposite directions and still manage to find each other
Denature
To release from itself in excessively hot, acidic, and salty environments
Dismiss
Mutate
Reconstruct
Innovate
Send faulty signals
Communicate
Have a backbone that can create salt and bombs alike
Have an outside of sweetness, but forces make it bitter
Have a base in its center
Make a ladder to ascend to higher understanding
The very material that makes us up is just like us... or are we just like it?
Is your mind spiraling yet?
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Name: Ryan McMasters
Stage Name: Ryan McMasters
Age: 25, but I'll be 26 by the competition's commencement.
Years Active in Slam: Two, which feels really weird to say. Time flies when you're having fun. . . or scouring deep-seated issues from places you didn't see before.
Teams You’ve Been a Member of: I've been part of no teams. I want to, so that's another frontier to pursue.
Place from which you are traveling to get to TGS: College Station.
Top 5 influential poets:
Amir Safi, because of his encouragement and leadership qualities directed in my life. I wouldn’t know how much potential others see in me without the opportunities he’s offered me.
Bill Moran, because of his wealth of knowledge he selflessly bestowed upon those he’s been around. He has cared and accepted countless around him, and his ability to be a quality human being is something that I’ve cherished in my friendship with him thus far.
Desiree Dallagiacomo, because of her passion, her vulnerability, her control of her emotion, and her urgency of informing others
Propaganda, because of his flow, word choice and his unapologetic Christian stance
Josh Garrels, because he is a songwriter that is lesser known but his lyrics are more poetry than a lot of stuff I hear. His words are purposeful, soulful, and need to be heard
Have you been to TGS before, & if so, what are you hoping is the same/different from your previous experience?
I participated in TGS last year. It was my first competition with big numbers. It was intimidating and the first time I memorized multiple pieces in one fell swoop, but I grew a lot & made some really cool connections as a result. I didn't make it past the initial round, so I'd appreciate progressing to the next & final one. Like last year, I’d like to meet new people and learn about them off the mic.
How would you describe your writing style?
My writing style is image-caked. I take different aspects of my life and combine it in ways when a lot of people wouldn’t be able to. I love words, breaking them apart and turning them into different aspects of a poem. It’s gotten more succinct and concentrated since last year. I used to write 4 and 5-minute poems, but I’ve edited more and break down the fluff of unnecessary words through this period of time. t’s grown me to whittle and refine, and my craft has been honed as a result.
Do you consider yourself more of a writer or a performer?
I am more of a writer than a performer, hands down, up, side to side. My words are innately the power in my performance, not the hand movements or body contortions, and I read/spit in a quieter register than a lot of people. I might have to work on that, but Hieu Minh Nguyen does it & he got to finals last year.
Who are you looking forward to/nervous as hell to compete against?
I fanboy for Team SNO, so Desiree, Sam, and Mwende are people/poets (they are both at the same time...) that I respect & look forward to informing alongside, and Michael Lee-Wolf from last year had some powerfully refreshing pieces, so I'm pleased that he is coming back again. The nervous competition would be with Bill Moran, that crimson man-phoenix that left us at Mic Check!!! I’ve heard and read a lot of his material, but I have strong suspicion that he is getting reacquainted with his lover’s body aka the state of Louisiana. I expect new poems from him and a ghost with a new haunting in his throat is always something to be wary of. I don't plan on underestimating any of the other poets, though.
What is your goal for this competition?
I'd love to have fun & be confident in my stage presence this year, so that's what I'll be working on this go-around.
What is going through your head before you get on stage?
“Will I offend people?” “I would be fine losing friendships after this.” “You can’t be liked by everybody.”
“I’m scared, but I’ll regret it if I don’t do this.”
I noticed that all of your influential poets are contemporary, still putting in work, writers. What connects you to artists that are creating while you are also creating? And, as a second part to that question, are you interested in "classic" or canonical writing?
Poetry is an ever-evolving life form. The commonality between every person I mentioned has a strong belief system that they’re passionate about. They have an urgency to proliferate what they believe to be important to others. I’d like to think that is what I share with them all. In some cases, like any human being with a difference of opinion, I may disagree with some of the stuff they say, but their character, their honesty, their conviction & their externalizations of motivation are all things I cherish and have gleaned from them in one way or another. They are all respectable and each has sizable amounts of credibility on and off stage. I don’t have the longest roots in poetic soil, admittedly. I’m not summarily against classic or canonical writing, but in some cases it bores me. Others, I have newer stuff closer to look around for since it’s constantly bubbling up in my sphere of influence. After the competition is complete, I have a few poets (Pablo Neruda, E.E. Cummings, and T.S.Eliot) that have been mentioned to me for me to try by one of the guys attending the writing sessions I put on this year. I need to pay homage to the poets before me, but my mind needs to be focused on the task of TGS at hand.
How has being conscious of your stage presence and performance changed the poems you write?
Originally, I wrote a lot of observational poems and commentaries about the human condition in general... and they would be a mouthful, 4-5 minutes each. I was longwinded then and I still am now. Ha. As I’ve grown out of my poetic prepubesence, I’ve focused on being concise and having powerful concentrations of imagery. In addition, through Bill Moran’s guidance, I’ve allowed myself to be more vulnerable. Bill taught me that the rawness you can give to others, the necessity of honesty instilling trust, and the story that you alone have is what’s worth putting out there. Putting walls in poems like everything in third person or talking about a situation rather than using snippets from the conversation have their own merit, but they consistently pale in comparison to the amount of power the line or stanza could have because of the degree of intimacy you are willing to breathe into it.
When honesty is laid bare, you are potentially sacrificing your image for the necessity of your reality to be known. As a poet starting out, I was afraid to gut myself so publicly. As a poet now, I can be a spin doctor sadist who can make anything scarring into something snapworthy if I chose to. I opt to be as embarrassingly real as I can because it’s a scary experience to talk about deep-seated issues, but being scared and bold are rarely mutually exclusive in this vein of society.
What keeps you going, keeps you writing, showing up to open mics and/or slams? Is it the poets around you? Is it just a pure want to improve? Is it all self-expression for you?
In full disclosure, what keeps me going is a want to pass on information, teach, bring somebody to a different perspective than what they’re used to. I think you can unlock another’s perception without tainting it. What keeps me writing is my mind’s inability to empty the inspiration until I give it rest on a bed of pages. I was kind of a sleeper cell poet. I didn’t start doing poetry as a child, teenager, or because of an emotional upheaval. I graduated from college and I started writing. I am and have been inspired by many aspects of life: friendships, word choice, confusion about love and my capacity to achieve and pursue enrichment of it, family, humanity and its long list of complexities, Christianity’s strengths and shortcomings, not to mention self-awareness. I show up to open mics because Mic Check has fostered a community that shows acceptance of varying offerings of vulnerability. Slams aren’t normally my thing. I’m not the most competitive person around, but I trust in my words and I stand by what I’ve written.That’s why I’m in the competition, not due to the thrill of the hunt.
Does science play a big role in your body of work? Or, as in this poem about a DNA helix, did the image and information just happen to match what you were trying to communicate?
I appreciate science. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology as an undergrad. Somehow, I got into poetry. That doesn’t answer your question, though. Science doesn’t inundate my poetry on purpose, but the word choice I utilize in my poems would effectively hint at the fact that I had a science background. I’ve written about bacterial infections and my previous job as a lab technician, among other things, but I’ve tried to diversify my poem topics to avoid being one-note.
What is your all-time favorite line of poetry?
There is a band named Beautiful Eulogy. They have a cd of quality experimental hip-hop and one of their tracks is called The String That Ties Us. It’s a spoken word poem about the personification of a kite. How the pursuit of pure freedom with no restraint leads inevitably to a broken mess. There is one line that gets me every time.
Here it is:
And the kite starts to think, “If I could somehow DETACH,
then I could REALLY fly.”
It’s beautiful in its simplicity, strong in its delivery, and it’s a very cohesive, clever way to get their point across in a way I had never thought about. That’s what poetry is to me: crossing the streams of uncharted images and synergizing them together to make a stronger product than they ever could by themselves and helping build understanding because of it. They did that, and that’s why this line consistently makes me double take with appreciation.