Speakers Rives: Performance poet, multimedia artist

Performance artist and storyteller Rives has been called "the first 2.0 poet," using images, video and technology to bring his words to life.

Why you should listen to him:

Part poet, part storyteller, part philosopher, Rives is a frequent TED contributor. A regular on HBO's Def Poetry Jame, Rives also starred alongside model Bar Refaeli in the 2008 Bravo special Ironic Iconic America, touring the United States on a "roller coaster ride through the eye-popping panorama of American pop culture."

Flat pages can't contain Rives' storytelling, even when paper is his medium. The pop-up books he creates for children unfold with surprise: The Christmas Pop-Up Present expands to reveal moving parts, hidden areas and miniature booklets inside. On stage, his poems burst in many directions, too, exposing multiple layers and unexpected treats: childhood memories, grown-up humor, notions of love and lust, of what is lost forever and of what's still out there waiting to unfold.

"This was great. He spoke like I imagine a good prophet would. Epic win!"

Joshua Mullen on TED.com

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Quotes by Rives

“If I ran the Web, you could email dead people.”
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“Some days, I’m as shallow as a baking pan, but I still stretch miles in all directions.”
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“Mockingbirds — that’s Mimus polyglottos — are the emcees of the animal kingdom. They listen and mimic and remix what they like.”
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“For a time that I find to be the most placid and uneventful hour of the day, four in the morning sure gets an awful lot of bad press.”
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“You look like a mermaid, but you walk like a waltz.”
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“I think my heartbeat might be the Morse code for ‘inappropriate.’”
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“Right now, talking to you, I’m not even really a guy. I’m a monkey blowing kisses at a butterfly.”
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“For years, the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn have been steadily drifting towards the equator at the rate of about 15 meters per year — and nobody told me.”
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“Tropical rainforests [are] the only place you can go nowadays and not get ‘friended.’”
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