BUDDY WAKEFIELD is the two-time Individual World Poetry Slam Champion (2004 and 2005) featured on NPR, the BBC, and HBO's Def Poetry Jam. In 2004 he won the Individual World Poetry Slam Finals thanks to the support of anthropologist and producer Norman Lear then successfully defended that title at the International Poetry Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands against the national champions of seven European countries with works translated into Dutch.

In 2005 he won the Individual World Poetry Slam Championship title again and has gone on to share the stage with nearly every notable performance poet in the world including Derrick Brown, Saul Williams, Sage Francis, Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Ani DiFranco in hundreds of venues internationally from Comedy Central's Hudson Theater and Scotland's Oran Moore to San Quentin State Penitentiary and CBGB's.

In the spring of 2001 Buddy left his position as the executive assistant at a biomedical firm in Gig Harbor, WA, sold or gave away all he owned, moved into the small town of Honda Civic, and set out to live for a living, touring every major poetry venue in North America through 2003. He still tours full time while managing The Bullhorn Collective (a talent agency founded by Wakefield), made up of 30 of the highest ranking Slam Poets and most accomplished performance poets alive.

Born in Shreveport, LA, mostly raised in Baytown, TX, now claiming Seattle, WA as home, Wakefield has been a busker in Amsterdam, a lumberjack in Norway, a street vendor in Spain, a team leader in Singapore, a re-delivery boy, a candy maker, a street sweeper, a bartender, a maid, a construction worker, manager of a CD store, a bull rider and a booking agent.

Wakefield is a growth junkie, an expert witness to the moon, avid player of marbles in the trees, inciter of the goose bump riot, elated son of a guitar repair woman, is void of S.T.D.'s, and remains generally hopeful for his health despite an abusive relationship with free range pastries. Buddy likes being the 2003 Seattle Poetry Grand Slam Champion and was voted Favorite Poet at the 2002 Midwest Poet's Choice Awards as well as Best Featured Slam Poet 2001-`03, Arizona. His work has been used to win national collegiate forensics competitions and is published internationally.

Buddy, a Board of Directors member with Youth Speaks Seattle, is known for delivering raw, rounded, high vibration performances of humor and heart while shifting social paradigms and making origami gum out of cross-cultural barriers through powerful bouts of release.

THERE IS NO ACCLAMATION FOR THIS ARTIST...

...except for the time one of Buddy's hero's, Bejamin Morse, called him "Monster of Energy, Keeper of Hope, Friend of My Soul..." That was a good one.

MORE ACCURATE BIO:

In the Fall of 1984 Anchor Bay Entertainment released a movie called Children of the Corn while Buddy lived in front of the corn fields near Niagara Falls, NY. This traumatic event (coupled with extensive exposure to Kenny Rogers and Lionel Richie) may or may not have led to Buddy being a sensitive poet puss who plays marbles in the trees, listens by talking, and keeps fingers on pulse. HI MOM!