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THE POETICS OF COMMERCE:
Snubbing the Nike Poetry Slam

by Martín Espada
09.01.98

I CONFESS that I am a poet of situations. I have written poems for weddings, birthdays, and holidays. I wrote a New Year's poem for the radio. I wrote a poem for the 25th anniversary of a magazine, and so the number 25 had to be featured in the poem. I even wrote a poem called "Pitching the Potatoes" for an anthology of poems about potatoes. Then I was asked to write a poem for a Nike commercial. This was the Nike Poetry Slam.

It is possible to write a good shoe poem. Here is my favorite poem about shoes, written by Jack Agueros:

Psalm for Distribution

Lord,
On 8th Street
Between 6th Avenue and Broadway
In Greenwich Village
There are enough shoe stores
With enough shoes
To make me wonder
Where there are shoeless people
On the earth.

Lord,
You have to fire the Angel
in charge of distribution.

This is probably not the kind of shoe poem contemplated by the creators of the Nike Poetry Slam.

Global Exchange, a human rights organization in San Francisco, has developed a "Nike Chronology" based on the documentation of company labor practices in Asia. In March 1996, fifteen women were hit on the head and neck with a Nike sneaker for "poor" work at the Sam Yang factory in Vietnam. In November 1996, CBS aired a 48 Hours documentary on similar abuses in Vietnam. Nike workers were forced to kneel with their hands in the air for twenty-five minutes as punishment, another worker had her mouth taped shut for talking, and two more workers reported an attempted rape by a Nike factory supervisor at the Tae Kwang Vina factory. On March 8,1997, International Women's Day, fifty-six women were forced to run outside the Nike factory in the Dong Nai province because they did not wear regulation shoes. A dozen women collapsed due to heat exhaustion and spent the day in the hospital. This incident was reported by Bob Herbert in the New York Times.

Then there are wages. Children in Pakistan stitch Nike soccer balls for 60 cents a day, according to Sydney Schanberg in Life magazine. Bob Herbert reported a study by Thuyen Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American businessman, which revealed that Nike workers in Vietnam earn $1.60 a day, while the average cost of three meals a day is $2.10. Global Exchange has also chronicled Nike's crackdown on the strikes in their factories, a predictable consequence of the struggle over wages. In January 1993, twenty-four workers accused of organizing a strike at the Sung Hwa Dunia factory in Indonesia were fired. Likewise, workers in the Assembly Production Department at the WeIlco Factory in China struck for their full wages in March 1997 and were all dismissed.

The common response to reports that U.S. companies are operating Third World sweatshops is an acknowledgment that conditions are spartan, followed closely by the assertion that these jobs are nonetheless superior to anything found elsewhere in that particular country. The Christian Science Monitor relayed these comments by Michael Hooker, Chancellor of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, defending the university's multimillion dollar contract with Nike: "The working conditions, relative to what else is available to them, are really very good. So people are clamoring for these jobs." Nike spokesman Vada Manager told the New York Times that "Nike workers earn superior wages and manufacture the product under superior conditions."

Yet, Global Exchange maintains that Nike did not pay the local minimum wage ($2.46 a day in Jakarta) to Indonesian workers until April 1997. Business Week reported on an internal audit at Nike which showed that the company paid its workers in Vietnam 20 percent less than the minimum wage of 19 cents per hour. This may explain why the workers at Sam Yang Vina factory struck in April 1997 for a raise of one penny an hour. As for "superior conditions," Nat Hentoff in the Village Voice cited that same internal audit, which "tells of a factory near Ho Chi Minh City where the level of carcinogens exceeded Vietnamese standards by 6 to 177 times in parts of the plant...77 percent of the workers are already afflicted with respiratory problems."

Meanwhile, according to New York Times, Nike reported sales of $9.2 billion in 1996. Bob Herbert summed up the significance of Nike with bitter eloquence: "Nike is important because it epitomizes the triumph of monetary values over all others, and the corresponding devaluation of those peculiar interests and values we once thought of as human." Nike's response to all the controversy, in Herbert's words, is "an elaborate international public relations campaign to give the appearance that it cares about the workers." This goes hand-in-hand with "advertising campaigns that are so slick, so hip, and so compelling that consumers feel that, whatever the price, they must wear the product." Thus the Nike Poetry Slam.

A poetry slam is, of course, a staged competition among poets, part of the "performance poetry" or "spoken word" phenomenon which has developed an enthusiastic following in the youth market so treasured by Nike. The Nike Poetry Slam required that poets compete by writing verse for commercials in praise of certain female athlete-Nike athletes participating in the 1998 Winter Olympics. This was part of Nike's larger ad campaign built around the female athlete, which a coalition of women's groups has identified as wildly ironic, given Nike's treatment of female workers in Asia.

As articulated by Matthew Rothschild in the January 1998 issue of The Progressive magazine, "Nike, one of the kings of co-optation. . .ever vigilant on the cultural front, wants to capitalize" on the poetry slams. So who are "Nike's Poets"? Rothschild advised: "Watch for those Nike ads that run during the 1998 Winter Olympics so you can pick out the poets who change the oil for the industry of hip consumerism."

What follows is the correspondence between Nike's ad agency and me....

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

October 14, 1997

Re: Nike Poetry Slam

Dear Mr. Espada:

The enclosed package contains what we hope will be an unusual and interesting project for you.

We are developing a series of four commercials, which will be aired on national television during the 1998 Winter Olympics. Each commercial will feature an outstanding and inspiring female athlete, sponsored by our client, Nike.

We hope these short films will celebrate the poetry of competition and athletics by using your words.

Detail follows in the proposal. All poems need to be submitted, using shipping materials to be provided, by November 1, 1997.

We are anxious to know about your participation and would like to confirm your involvement by October 22. If you have questions, please feel free to call me [...] As well, we would like to confirm your involvement and address for delivery of video and shipping materials by October22 with a call to the same number.

In advance, we thank you for your time to review and respond.

Sincerely,
Cindy Fluitt
Producer

A PROPOSAL TO A FEW SELECT POETS
FOR THE NIKE POETRY SLAM

 

This year's Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan will be unlike any before. Women will compete in greater numbers, in more sports. And for perhaps the first time, a large number of female competitors will be athletes who grew up feeling empowered, supported and equal to their male counterparts when it came to athletic opportunities, facilities and training.

It is a rare, historic change and with your help, we want to applaud it.

We would like to celebrate four of the most remarkable of the new women athletes in a series of commercial films that will run during the Olympic telecasts. And we'd like to do it through the eyes of artists like yourselves. You each have a voice, outlook and perspective on the world that we feel mirrors, in some fashion, the spirit these athletes possess.

Read the accompanying biographies of Picabo Street, Dawn Staley, Cammi Granato and Mia Hamm. Watch the videotapes. If you don't know these athletes now, we feel sure you'll soon find them unique:

uniquely committed to the rigors of sport at the highest levels, uniquely aware of their roles in history.

Then write about one of them. Or each of them. Or all of them at once. It could be about their roles in the world of sports, their individual styles, the significance of their contributions.

Ultimately, of course, you are free to write anything you want. We will not censor your thoughts or opinions or feelings. You don't have to write about shoes or even mention Nike. This is not meant to be a commercial: It is meant to be a showcase for these athletes and for your work. (For legal reasons, you should not include references to the Olympics, Games or medals and keep in mind TV network standards and practices regarding content and language).

It must be possible for your poem to be read aloud in less than 30 seconds. (Otherwise, we may have to edit your piece for time.) Unfortunately, the mechanics of commerce outweigh the demands of art in this instance.

You may submit your work to us in writing, or even better, videotape yourself reading the piece.

We will be illustrating the poems in short films that will work rather like rock videos. Perhaps you will be in the film, perhaps not. Creative input will be welcome, but remains the responsibility of the creative team and client.

All poems submitted become the property of Nike, with rights to display, edit for length and publish. There is $250 fee paid for one or more submissions by November 1 and a $2500 prize if we choose your work for the project. If you would prefer, we will donate this prize to a charity of your choice.

We are also approaching a few select high schools for poetry submissions from their students.

Videotapes, releases and shipping information will be forthcoming when we determine your interest and availability

Thank you and good luck. We look forward to hearing your work.

October 22, 1997

Cindy Fluitt, Producer
Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
720 California Street
San Francisco, CA 94108

Re: Nike Poetry Slam

Dear Ms. Fluitt:

This is a letter in response to your correspondence concerning the Nike Poetry Slam and my proposed participation.

I could reject your offer based on the fact that your deadline is ludicrous (i.e., ten days from the above date). A poem is not a pop tart.

I could reject your offer based on the fact that I would not be free to write whatever I want, notwithstanding your assurances to the contrary, since I must "keep in mind TV network standards and practices regarding content and language." You clearly have no idea what the word "censorship" means. Where, as you put it, "the mechanics of commerce outweigh the demands of art," then de facto censorship will flourish.

I could reject your offer based on the fact that, to make this offer to me in the first place, you must be totally and insultingly ignorant of my work as a poet, which strives to stand against all that you and your client represent. Whoever referred me to you did you a grave disservice.

I could reject your offer based on the fact that your client, Nike, has through commercials such as these outrageously manipulated the youth market, so that even low-income adolescents are compelled to buy products they do not need at prices they cannot afford.

Ultimately, however, I am rejecting your offer as a protest against the brutal labor practices of Nike. I will not associate myself with a company that engages in the well-documented exploitation of workers in sweatshops. Please spare me the usual corporate response: there's no problem, and besides, we're working on it. I suggest, instead, that you take the $2500 you now dangle before me and distribute that money equally among the laborers in an Asian sweatshop doing business with Nike. The funds would be much more useful to them than to me. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Martín Espada

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