Spiritual Misfits Podcast · Meeting Ground

Poetry, Identity, and the Search for Belonging (Andrew Cox)

·49 min·3 clips

Andrew links Filipino Catholic practice to colonization and says "am I colonized or colonizer?"

1. Spiritual Misfits Podcast centers on Andrew Cox and poetry, identity, and belonging. 2. Will Small interviews Andrew Cox, who leads Canberra Poetry Slam and performs as a poet and spoken-word artist. 3. The episode asks how poetry slams can function as spiritual community without pretending to have final answers. 4. Andrew says he grew up in the Catholic church because he is Filipino, but he often felt disconnected from it. 5. He says his first sense of spirituality came at hardcore metal shows, where "nothing else matters except that moment." 6. He later found the same feeling in slam poetry and spoken word, where community and performance happen together. 7. Andrew describes poetry spaces as places where people can be vulnerable, freestyle, and still feel safe. 8. He says his early poems were urgent and evangelical in tone, because he wanted people to understand what he believed mattered. 9. He compares that younger posture to his current work, which tries to "go deeper" and resist easy slogans. 10. He says he used to try turning 10-minute poems into 2-minute slam pieces, and now thinks that was backwards. 11. Andrew says he once tried to go from writing "shit" to writing "good" immediately, instead of moving through the process. 12. He says performance keeps changing because the audience changes, the room changes, and the words land differently each time. 13. He describes one transcendent experience as feeling like he "went to another planet" and then came back to earth. 14. He connects that feeling to church, saying the best moments in both spaces involve shared connection and collective movement. 15. Andrew says the Philippines mixes indigenous culture and Catholic practice in ways shaped by colonization. 16. He reads lines from a poem that asks, "Am I colonized or colonizer?" and "Which parts of me are my father's?" 17. He says his current version of that poem is less a declaration and more an inquiry, which changes how he performs it. 18. The conversation is reflective and personal, with Will Small pushing questions about faith, certainty, and how communities hold people. 19. Listeners who like spoken word, faith deconstruction, and Filipino identity will likely connect with this episode. 20. Listeners looking for a quick, answer-driven faith talk may skip it.

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