225BatonRouge.com

Age: 35

Hometown: Plaquemine

Title: Writer/mentor and program coordinator for

Big Buddy’s WordPlay program, spoken word artist

The Monday night open mic crowd at Chelsea’s Café is diverse: young and old, black and white, professionals and students.

The din of barroom conversation shrinks as Chancelier “xero” Skidmore makes his way to the microphone.

With veteran emcee confidence he warms up the crowd by reading “What I Want,” a poem by George Bilgere. His delivery is forceful, his voice steady. Applause erupts as he delivers the last phrase and humbly steps aside, making way for the torrent of poets who will follow. He pops back up to the mic throughout the evening’s performances and recites his own verse, tackling religion, racism, sexism and homophobia.

“I always feel obligated to get people to think about some of the things we don’t have dialogue about,” he says. “Baton Rouge is not a very progressive city.”

Graduating from rap ciphers to spoken word, he honed his craft at the now-defunct M’s Fine and Mellow Café. In 2000 he made the Baton Rouge Slam Team and competed in the national competition. He remained a top national competitor, through 2004.

Before poetry, Skidmore made the rounds working at chemical plants along the river, even working as a forklift operator in a paper warehouse, which is where the name “xero” derived.

“At the time most poets were coming up with these self-aggrandizing stage names, and I figured I could stand out if I chose a name that was slightly more modest,” he says. The result was zero—spelled “xero,” which is Xerox minus the second x.

He’s turned his love of poetry into a career, working for WordPlay, a Big Buddy program designed to develop teen voices through writing.

When he’s not working at Big Buddy, he plays percussion with the Michael Foster Project on Wednesdays, and works at City at Peace, a nonprofit performing arts organization.

A piece of his poetry was recently published in Spoken Word Redux, a highly acclaimed collection of contemporary poetry. But lately, he’s too busy to spend time on original poetry.

“I’d write every day if I had time. I never really experience writer’s block. I might write something I don’t like, but

I’m never staring at a blank sheet. Writer’s block doesn’t exist.

There’s only writing and writing better.” xeroskidmore.com

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