Emily XYZ has enjoyed a long and barely profitable career in the spoken word scene. At her first public appearance (at the Paradise club in Boston in 1981) she read her rendition of Dr. Seuss's "Fox in Sox." She lasted less than a minute into the show, when the audience started throwing bottles, and Emily was quickly escorted offstage.
In 1982 her spoken word recording "Who Shot Sadat?" won the "(White) Indie Single of the Year" in The Village Voice's Pazz and Jop Poll. For most of the 1980s, Emily XYZ wrote and performed pieces for 1, 2 and 3 voices. Eventually she settled on the 2-voice format, which continues to be her preferred mode of poetic expression.
In 1992 Emily XYZ began performing her 2-voice works with actress Myers Bartlett. They have performed in numerous venues and nightclubs all over New York City, including Alice Tully Hall, the Kitchen, the Museum of Modern Art, St. Mark's Poetry Project and The Nuyorican Poets Cafe. They toured across the U.S.and Canada, Germany in 1994 and Australia in 1996. Their performance of XYZ's poem "Slot Machine" was featured in the PBS television series "The United States of Poetry" in 1996.
Listen now to Emily XYZ and Myers Bartlett perform the piece "Sinatra Walks Out," courtesy of Kill Rock Stars.
