SOURCE: “Unspoken Genius,” in Real Detroit Weekly, January 13–19, 2000.

In the following interview, Alteri questions Carroll about his spoken-word recordings, his feelings about poetry, his drug addiction, and the conflict between his musical career and his literary aspirations.

[Alteri:] Why did you start doing spoken word performances?

[Carroll:] Well readings is just another name for spoken word performance I guess. When the whole spoken word thing happened, you know new things came along like slams and people doing more amalgamating performance art with spoken word pieces. Usually in the old days, performance art happenings, the best ones, were wordless and so it’s just like a combination of both. I come from the old school where I think any poem worth its salt has to work on the page. But I also think it has to have a natural lyrical quality to it and of course it’s much...