Rudy Francisco is the founder and current coach of the San Diego Poetry Slam Team, which won the 2017 National Poetry Slam Championship. His style for his poems encompass 'personal and political narratives through an honest and humorous approach.' But Francisco says, 'he is not finished yet, he is still learning.' When asked what Helium means in an interview, Francisco states that 'helium allows you to defy gravity' and “in a lot of ways poetry always gave me that temporary escape.” Themes for Helium include: race, class, gender, love and self reflection. It took Rudy Francisco a year and a half to write the collection of 58 poems. Rudy went on to write his debut poetry book Getting Stitches in 2013, Scratch in 2014, No Gravity in 2015, and his first full-length book Helium in 2017 which was published by Button Poetry. Rudy has performed in many competitions, as well as shows all around the country and out of the states. He found that slam combines his two favorite things: writing and performing. Now, he enjoys getting a score at the end of competition performances. At first, Rudy has said that he thought that performing your poems was weird since you were being judged for your art. He also says reading the book The Music Lesson by Victor Wooten was pivotal moment in his life as a poet. Rudy first got into performance poetry after going to many open mics and also after watching a show that featured the poet Shihan and fell in love with the style afterwards.

program before quitting to do poetry full-time.

He worked as a statistical analyst and completed three years of a Ph.D. Rudy has said that it was a very hard decision for him to decide between school and poetry, but he was in love with poetry more than his program. As he became more involved with performing, he began to miss school a lot due to the demand of travel in order to perform. He got invited to other open mics and met other poets through them. Rudy was also an RA at his school and started hosting open mics. He went on to complete his Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology and pursue a master's degree in industrial and organizational psychology. Rudy attended Alliant International University in San Diego. He then, with a group of local poets and activists called 'Collective Purpose,' opened an open mic known as Elevated in San Diego, which has been open for over ten years. He also began to go to open mics in his area until they were closed due to gentrification. Francisco became more involved with spoken word as he watched HBO's Def Poetry.

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