S2E5 : Rives, Part II | Fencing Wind Chimes

Artist Care and Feeding

Rives is a poet, storyteller, author, speaker, event host, paper engineer, night owl activist, and since 2013 has been curator of the Museum of Four O'Clock in the Morning. He is a frequent speaker at the TED conference (in fact he is one of a rare few presenters who have six talks on TED.com) and he has been a regular host of TEDActive and TEDYouth. Rives appeared on Seasons 3–6 of HBO's Def Poetry Jam and was a member of Team Hollywood, which won the 2004 National Poetry Slam. He 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.” Rives also appeared as the “first 2.0 poet” in a series of ads for telecom company Orange S.A., and has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and appeared on NPR's All Things Considered.
As a poet, Rives' way with words has been called a “demonstration of what the English language is capable of.” He is known for humorously layered and heartwarming pieces such as “Kite” and “Mockingbird," as well as for his use of multimedia in his performances, seamlessly intertwining images, video, and often the audience members themselves with his poems.
Rives has written and paper engineered several pop-up books for children and adults. Flat pages can't contain his 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. Early in his career, Rives worked at Intervisual Books, under the leadership of Waldo Hunt. Two pop-up books, with paper engineering by Rives—The Consummate Cigar Book and If I Were A Polar Bear—were finalists for the Movable Book Society Meggendorfer Prize for Best Paper Engineering.
Recently, with our Cathleen, Rives began hosting Nighthawks Hangouts, invitation-only online gatherings for night owls, nighthawks, dawn-treaders, night shifters, midnight ramblers, lifelong and situational insomniacs, apprentice vampires, and those who are more likely to stay up until than to wake up at dawn, and who often find themselves awake when much of the rest of the world is asleep.
Rives' website: ShopliftWindchimes.com
The Museum of Four in the Morning website: fourinthemorning.com
The Museum of Four in the Morning on Twitter: @mofitm
The Museum of Four in the Morning on Instagram: @mofitm
Nighthawks Hangout on Twitter: @nighthawkshang
Nighthawks Hangout on Instagram: @nighthawkshang
Rives on TED.com