Beau Sia

Sia was born in Ohio.[1] He is of Chinese-Filipino descent. Raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Sia discovered spoken word poetry on MTV as a teenager. When not participating in his high school's swim team, he spent time at Oklahoma City's only open mic night.

In 1995, Sia moved to New York City, where he attended the New York University's Tisch School of the Arts dramatic writing program. He has said that moving to New York City made him conscious of his identity as an Asian American, something that he denied often in Oklahoma City. His cultural identity became a common theme in his poems.

Sia began performing at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, eventually earning himself a place on the 1996 Nuyorican National Poetry Slam team. That same year, he was filmed for the documentary SlamNation. The film followed Sia and his Nuyorican teammates (Saul Williams, Jessica Care Moore and muMs da Schemer) as they competed at the 1996 National Poetry Slam. The team went on to place third in the nation, and have a lasting impact on how people view slam poetry. In the book Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, author Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz wrote of Sia's impact, noting

Beau Sia took Maggie Estep's pop culture reference-heavy work to the next level, bouncing across the stage, frenzied and electrified. His work was confrontational, hilarious and unapologetic. Sia was a firebrand who seemed determined to smash the prevailing stereotypes of Asian-America, the ones that painted Asian-Americans as being meek, passive and voiceless.[2]

Sia's relationship with the Poetry Slam community continued. He eventually earned two National Poetry Slam Championships in 1997 and 2000 while competing on the NYC-Urbana national poetry slam team. He also reached second place in the Individual Poetry Slam competition in 2001.

Inspired to mischief by a reading A Night Without Armor – a book of poems by the folksinger Jewel – Sia composed a parody entitled A Night Without Armor II: The Revenge.[3] It was reviewed for Entertainment Weekly by Alexandra Jacobs, who noted, “[Sia’s] deadpan parodies of such Jewel gems as ‘God Exists Quietly’ (‘inside my underwear/why don’t you come over/and say hello’)…have quickly won a following.”[4]

Sia then began touring around Europe and the United States. He also appeared in films and published a wide range of his works in book and compact disc form. He also released an album on Mouth Almighty Records, a spoken-word imprint of Mercury/PolyGram Records that was active during the 1990s.

Sia's style is humorous and satirical. His word choice is often deceptively simple. A good example of his work is the poem "love," which was first performed at Marymount Manhattan College in 1996. It is featured on his CD Attack! Attack! Go!, as well as being included in the book Slam.

• Sia, Beau. A Night Without Armor II: the Revenge. New York: Mouth Almighty Books, 1998.
• Sia, Beau. Attack! Attack! Go! Compact disc released in 1998 by Mouth Almighty/Mercury/PolyGram Records.
• Sia, Beau. The Undisputed Greatest Writer Of All Time. Long Beach: Write Bloody Publishing, 2012.
• Sia, Beau. WHITE POWER. Los Angeles: not a cult., 2017.[5]

• Glazner, Gary Mex, ed. Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry. San Francisco: Manic D Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0916397661
• Sia, Beau. A Night Without Armor II: the Revenge. New York: Mouth Almighty Books, 1998. ISBN 9780966204292
• von Ziegesar, Cecily, ed. Slam. New York: Alloy Books, 2000. ISBN 978-0141309194

• Beau Sia at IMDb
• Article regarding Beau in Slam at ColorLines Magazine
• Interview by the Philadelphia City Paper
• PlanetAUTHORity interview
• Scene Missing Magazine Interviews Beau Sia
• Is There A Future For Spoken Word? @ dropmagazine.com