Lizard Lounge Poetry Jam-Timothy Mason

$10

Timothy Mason has been actively performing poetry and promoting folk music since the 1980′s. He honed his performance style in the early poetry slams, the underground coffeehouse scene of Cambridge, MA, and around the campfires of the fabled Kerrville Folk Festival.
An extensive background in human services, three years volunteering for a telephone crisis intervention hotline, training as a rape crisis counselor, four years working with developmentally disabled adults, a stint with court-involved youth, and eight years volunteering in a battered women’s shelter have given him a unique empathy with the quiet battles of daily survival.
His poetry is drawn from his diverse experiences and is written to be performed aloud. He has collaborated with musicians on a number of occasions, including recording the cassette single Saddam’s Insane with prize-winning guitarist Geoff Bartley. Saddam’s Insane aired on National Public Radio’s HEAT show at the onset of the Gulf War. His work with Bartley has been followed by two full-length CDs.
Mason has demonstrated his performing versatility in multiple appearances with the WPI Jazz Department, working with the full big band and smaller ensembles in pops concert settings and in the 2008 Ottawa Folk Festival Cross Cultural Collaboration, where he combined his poetry with the music of The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Jaxson Haldine, James Hill, Radslov Lorkavich, Anne Davidson, and others in a performance recorded by the CBC.
From Anchorage, Toronto, and Ottawa to Boston, Austin, and Oakland, festival and club appearances have solidified his place among contemporary New England artists and international audiences.