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Patrick Sanchez
Undaunted, he went on to compete as an individual at the Seattle Nationals in 2001. He continues to blend dramatic and performance techniques with poetry in PolyRhythmic, a collective of writers, musicians, visual artists, and other performing artists drawn from Chicago's diverse literary community. In 2002, however, he took a sabbatical from performance poetry and, importantly, to earn an education by enlisting in the US Air Force. Chicago looks forward to his full-time return to poetry and performance at the end of his education and tours of duty.
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In 2000, Patrick Sanchez was a relative newcomer to Chicago's downtown gatherings of poets, though he had spent much of his life within Chicago's sphere. He attended college at Valparaiso. He grew up in northern Indiana, near Chicago, but, as he's said himself, rarely ventured north of 115th Street. Once he did, however, other performance poets began to sit up and take notice. Sanchez began appearing and competing at all three contemporary slam venues in Chicago at that time (Uptown Poetry Slam, Mental Graffiti, Words on Tap), and quickly made a name for himself with his intense and quick language. By spring of 2001, Sanchez had secured a spot for himself on the Words on Tap (Woodlawn Tap, Hyde Park, Chicago) national slam team before the venue folded in an untimely fashion.