Beau Sia

Beau Sia (, born 1976) is an American slam poet.

Sia was born in Ohio.

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.

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 said to be deceptively simple.

Sia's appearances on television were on Def Poetry; he later appeared in the Broadway version, Def Poetry Jam.

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.

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 appeared in Slam in 1998 as Jimmy Huang.

The same year, he participated in the documentary SlamNation as himself.

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. 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.”

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.

Later appearances include The Manchurian Candidate (2004) as a late-night comedian on television and

Hitch (2005) as Duane Reade Clerk.

Sia portrays the protagonist in the music video for Wolf Like Me by the band TV on the Radio.

Sia portrays a minor character, Cicero, in Jeremy Saulnier's directorial debut, Murder Party (2007).

Sia plays Norman Sklear, a wedding czar emcee in Rachel Getting Married (2008).

In 2015, Sia appeared in yet another Jonathan Demme film, Ricki and the Flash, followed by a recurring role on the web series Pretty Dudes alongside such actors as Dion Basco and Yoshi Sudarso.

Sia, in collaboration with former Gearbox Software writer Anthony Burch, created the narrative for the exploration video game Failsafe.