Roots and Routes: Home and Belonging in Embodied Performativity

Abstract

This paper aims at examining the expressive potential of poetry in the spoken word and the ‘performative turn’ in the world of poetry, which blurs the lines between a poem and its performance, thus expanding the field of poesis and poetics. It analyses “Homeward”, the performance poetry of Bassey Ikpi, a spoken word artist, who brings alive the picture of her childhood in her grandmother’s home in Nigeria fusing together both the narrative and the visual through the spoken word.