Spoken Word Poets Research Articles

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan’s Postcolonial Banter and the paradoxes of spoken-word poetry

ABSTRACTThis article reads the work of Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, an activist and spoken-word poet who, as a British Muslim woman and postcolonial critic, is uniquely placed to articulate postcolonial concerns such as the mental colonization caused by colonial languages and the epistemic violence of colonial discourses. Further, an analysis of the author’s subject position demonstrates how Manzoor-Khan’s work vividly illustrates the predicament of the subaltern fighting to be heard. Her didactic metapoetry translates familiar postcolonial concerns into the 21st century by constituting a hybrid form between poetry and academic discourse, by introducing the vocabulary of postcolonial theory into the casual language of spoken-word poetry, and by employing rhetorical strategies that problematize the relationship between poet and audience as well as the rhetorical burden of producing “humanising” poetry. By analysing how she maintains a tense relationship with her audience, the article complicates what may be misunderstood as straightforward political poetry.

Contributors

Contributors

A Critique of Philosophical Shamanism

A Critique of Philosophical Shamanism

Decolonization through Spoken Word Poetry: A Postcolonial Analysis of Emi Mahmoud and Safia Elhillo’s poetry

Hip Hop has been a cultural wave creating and modifying the revolution started in the 1970s by Black people against systemic oppression, and while it manifests itself as a commodified narrativization against racism, sexism and other equally troublesome oppressive ideologies, it becomes a site for change through ethnographic performativity. Spoken Word poets have used this tool to bring marginal narratives to the center and challenge the heteropatriarchal lens, misogynoir and racist practices all around the world. Spoken word poetry has not been researched analytically or theoretically much previously, and even when it was, the research and statistics were limited to the technical aspects of performance. This paper deals with the idea of culture being a site for performance, and simultaneously performance being the action that precedes stereotypes and false representations of marginalized cultures throughout the global north. The spoken word poets use the stage as a liminal space for a multiplicity of cultures to thrive, and challenge the oppressive tools, including that of language, clothing, and voice used by mainstream cultures to oppress the said communities, and normalize their own traditions and morals. The paper reveals the performative tactics used by spoken word poets in order to deinstitutionalize systems of power, and establish a counter narrative of their own as a form of revolution.

High Time to Break Up the Boys’ Club: The Gendered Politics of Spoken Word and Open Mic Spaces in Trinidad and Tobago

The increased visibility of spoken word in media, public campaigns, and literary festivals demands critical attention to the social organisation of the art form, movement, and space. This paper explores the gendered politics of spoken word and open mic spaces in Trinidad and Tobago since 2000. Based on semi-structured interviews with spoken word poets and open mic organisers, this article discusses the unequal gender power relations between male and female spoken word poets in open mic events. I argue that unredressed gender stereotypes and male privilege contextually marginalise female spoken word poets and maintain the posture of “power” for male spoken word poets and organisers in the movement.

Your Story Will Forever Float as Memory: Afrodiasporic Cultural Production and Activism in Black Canada

ABSTRACT The narratives presented in this article speak to the lived experiences of an Afrodiasporic activist: an educator and spoken word poet named Efe. Efe mobilized his talents to support racialized youths as they navigated the complex and often difficult social context of Toronto, Canada. Efe also used his cultural production to speak to his own personal frustrations with being a Black man within Canada. These narratives are important because they counter the hegemonic way Canada is depicted as a welcoming “multicultural” country, consequently denying the racist and problematic methods that have been historically used when dealing with indigenous and Black communities and individuals.

‘a night where june and moon rhyme’

Dr Raphael d’Abdon is a writer, scholar, spoken word poet, editor and translator. In 2007 he complied, translated and edited I nostri semi/Peo tsa rona, an anthology of contemporary South African poetry. In 2011 he translated into Italian (with Lorenzo Mari) Bless Me Father, the autobiography of South African poet Mario d’Offizi. In 2013, he compiled and edited the collection Marikana: A Moment in Time. He is the author of three collections of poems, sunnyside nightwalk (Johannesburg: Geko, 2013), salt water (Johannesburg: Poetree Publishing, 2016) and the bitter herb (East London: The Poets Printery, 2018), and he has read his poetry in South Africa, Nigeria, Somaliland, Italy, Sweden and the USA. His poems are published in journals, magazines and anthologies in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi, Singapore, Palestine, India, Italy, Canada, USA and UK, he is South Africa’s representative of AHN (Africa Haiku Network), and he is a member of ZAPP (The South African Poetry Project) and IPP (International Poetry Project), two joint-projects of the University of Cambridge, UNISA and the University of the Witwatersrand, whose chief aims are to promote poetry in schools in South Africa, UK and beyond, and to instill knowledge, understanding and a love of poetry in young learners.This interview is conducted through e mails in the months of April-May 2020 when Corona virus ravished the world. We saw light through the wings of poesy. We reached out each other through questions and answers about poetry, life and the immediate.

“My Body Is a Temple/I Am the God It Was Built For”: An Examination of the Confrontation of Male Entitlement in the Spoken Word Poetry of Savannah Brown and Hollie McNish

Alternative forms of expression, like spoken word and slam poetry, manifest themselves when conventional representations silence certain groups. These alternative forms, however, also hold the capacity to exclude certain individuals as is illustrated by the objectification of women in many contemporary spoken word forms. While the rising popularity of this genre of poetry reinforces the male gaze, certain female spoken word artists refuse to allow this form to erase their own experiences. This essay therefore brings to the forefront the voices of those who have emerged to confront this silencing and assert a female identity not determined by male fantasies. A strategic focus on the poems ‘hi, i’m a slut’ by Savannah Brown and ‘A Poem on Flo Rida’s Blow My Whistle’ by Hollie McNish, explores the effectiveness of the techniques used by female spoken word poets to subvert and even ridicule this male-dominated form, which in turn creates a liberating space in which the voices of women are brought to centre stage.

Facing the Sun by Janice Lynn Mather

Reviewed by: Facing the Sun by Janice Lynn Mather Deborah Berglind, Editor Mather, Janice Lynn Facing the Sun. Simon, 2020 [416p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781534406049 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781534406063 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 8-12 Four Bahamanian teenaged girls share narration: Eve, the straitlaced pastor's daughter, whose time is spent caring for younger brothers and sisters; KeeKee, the spoken-word poet, whose mother is the neighborhood provider of shelter, period products, and condoms; Faith, who's flirting with somebody's boyfriend while aching over her mother's mental deterioration at home; and Nia, who longs to escape her strict and overprotective mother. When the local beach is sold to a developer for the building of a hotel, that means the end of their haven and of Eve's father's beach church, and the loss seems to symbolize other major changes in the girls' lives. This is a sprawling, lushly written, high-class soap opera filled with old-fashioned reveals about parentage (two of the girls turn out to be half-sisters), betrayal (one girl plagiarizes another's work), mental illness (though Faith's mother's illness is at one point labeled as dementia, it seems more a classic gothic presentation), and tragedies (one parent is keeping advancing cancer from their family). While the girls' voices are somewhat indistinguishable and the events melodramatic, that over-the-top eventfulness is the point with this kind of story, and Mather writes with inviting, atmospheric prose that vividly conveys life on Pinder Street, the intertwining dynamics of the families there, and the emotional intensity of teenaged life in the face of all kinds of change. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Poetry, Identity, and Family: An Interview with Amal Kassir Conducted by Nina Zietlow

Amal Kassir is a 23-year-old Syrian-American spoken word poet and artist. Kassir has performed in 10 countries and over 45 cities and has conducted workshops, given lectures, and recited her poetry in venues ranging from youth prisons to orphanages, refugee camps to universities, and churches to community spaces. She hopes to take part in the global effort to support literacy in war-struck areas and refugee camps and runs a project called More than Metaphors that focuses on helping to educate displaced Syrian children. Recipient of multiple awards, including the Grand Slam at the Brave New Voices International Youth Competition, Kassir has performed on the TED stage and been featured on the PBS NewsHour.

“[T]he most underrated genre”: Malaysian Poetry in English in the 21st Century

The point of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, it will survey all the important volumes of poetry by Malaysian poets writing in English in the new millennium and try to infer the current trends of Malaysian poetic writing in English. Secondly, I will show how the online social media has been wholly responsible in keeping the poetic word alive, especially in terms of the number of young writers who have espoused the form of the Spoken Word sub-genre of poetry. In fact, the spoken word poets seem to have discovered a new poetic “nerve” of the nation that is both exciting and challenging to read.

In the wake of the poetic: Palestinian artists after Darwish

Heralding a new period of creativity, In the Wake of the Poetic explores the aesthetics and politics of Palestinian cultural expression in the last two decades. As it increasingly gains a significant presence on the international scene, much of Palestinian art owes a debt to Mahmoud Darwish, one of the finest contemporary poets, and to Palestinian writers of his generation. Rahman maps the immense influence of Darwish’s poetry on a new generation of performance artists, visual artists, spoken-word poets, and musicians. Through an examination of selected works by key artists—such as Suheir Hammad, Ghassan Zaqtan, Elia Suleiman, Mona Hatoum, Sharif Waked, and others—Rahman articulates an aesthetic founded on loss, dispersion, dispossession, and transformation. It interrupts dominant regimes, constituting acts of dissension and intervention. It reinscribes belonging and is oriented toward solidarity and future. This innovative wave of experimentation transforms our understanding of the national through the diasporic and the transnational, and offers a profound meditation on identity. -- Publisher's website.

Melbourne, City of Literature

WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 5 IN 2008 global humanitarian organization unesco classified Melbourne, Australia , an official City of Literature. It’s one of only eleven cities to bear the title worldwide , and even the most cursory search into the culture surrounding Melbourne makes it easy to see why. Per capita, more of Melbourne’s citizens read for pleasure than in any other city in Australia. Nearly half the population of the state of Victoria belongs to one of the area’s more than 250 libraries. In addition, Melbourne hosts several widely attended writing festivals throughout the year. Opened in 1854, the State Library of Victoria is Australia’s oldest library. You may have seen its La Trobe Reading Room featured in the Outpost of WLT’s September 2015 issue. Seeing that beautiful space in person would be reason enough to visit, but with more than seventy thousand items added to its collections each year, it’s also undoubtedly one of the best places to go if you’re looking for more information about Australia’s rich cultural history. It also houses the Wheeler Centre, opened in 2010, which hosts authors in near-daily discussions on everything from comedy and the climate to, of course, literacy and publishing. The city is also home to the Melbourne Writers Festival. Celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year, this festival’s nearly two-week program is among the longest I have heard of. MWF hosted four hundred writers in 2014, from independent authors to best-selling juggernauts— something for everyone. And the festival features more than just literature; you’ll also find musicians, spoken-word poets, and a different artist in residence at Federation Square every day. Best of all, onethird of its events are free. Venturing out from the library and festival into Melbourne’s laneways brings further literary adventure. Depending on which streets you visit, you’ll find everything from cafés to literacy centers in this area of Melbourne. Marked by colorful graffiti, there is plenty of space for writers and readers in the Flinders Lane precinct bounded by Swanston and Elizabeth streets. The Victorian Writers’ Centre, Collected Works Bookshop, Aboriginal Literacy Foundation, Centre for Adult Education , Letterbox, and City Library are all here, as is the literary-leaning Journal café. Jackie Lamoureux is a WLT intern. photo : rae allen Notebook city profile Melbourne, City of Literature by Jackie Lamoureux MELBOURNE IN LITERATURE Peter Carey Amnesia Knopf, 2015 Sophie Cunningham Melbourne University of New South Wales Press, 2011 Gerald Murnane A Million Windows David R. Godine, 2016 A. S. Patrić Black Rock White City Transit Lounge Publishing, 2015 ...

Black Joy in the Time of Ferguson

Research Article| June 01 2015 Black Joy in the Time of Ferguson Javon Johnson Javon Johnson Javon Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Performance and Communication Studies at San Francisco State University. In addition, he is a spoken word poet and is currently completing his book (Rutgers University Press) on the performances of blackness in slam and spoken word poetry communities. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking (2015) 2 (2): 177–183. https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.2.2.0177 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Javon Johnson; Black Joy in the Time of Ferguson. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 1 June 2015; 2 (2): 177–183. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.2.2.0177 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressQED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2015 Michigan State University2015 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Bas Böttcher: Poesie als Eigenwerbung

Since its advent, advertising has had an uncomfortable, yet symbiotic relationship with the literary arts. While the advertising world soon recognised the advantages of harnessing the powerful rhetorical potential of poetry in its service, many poets have recognised equally the commercial advantages of applying their literary talents to the art of advertising. So long an integral part of society, it is hard to imagine a world without advertising. Therefore, when German spoken-word poet Bas Bottcher uses his poetry to reflect the world he lives in, the result is a literature strongly influenced by advertising. Immediately obvious is the influence of brand names, or similes based on advertising slogans. Perhaps less obvious is, for example, the formal influence of a McDonald’s advertising campaign that inspired one of his best-known poems. At a deeper level, however, Bottcher recognises that poetry itself is like any other consumer product. It not only needs to satisfy customer demand for a quality product, but also, in today’s saturated market, to be launched with its own integrated advertising campaign designed to attract public attention and create market interest.

From the Book & New Media Review Editor’s Desk

From the Book & New Media Review Editor’s Desk Jim Bowman In our capacities as civically engaged community members, critical language scholars, and reflective professional educators, daily work in a pluralistic society regularly and inevitably implicates us in discourses of complex cultural difference. Whether our context involves literacy work with refugee communities or the teaching of writing in higher education, similar challenges over access, power, and language can vex our professional practices. Recent scholarship in literacy studies reviewed in this issue covers an ambitious host of questions. For example, what does it mean to teach language and literacy for all members of our society? How do we do this, and, for that matter, how do we measure the meaning of our efforts? What sort of rhetorical flexibility is requisite for a scholar-educator who wishes to realize a vision of social justice in historically inequitable institutions? Difficult questions deserve sustained, reflective, scholarly treatment. Fortunately, a wealth of resources avails itself to those determined to better understand and respond to the social and cultural differences that produce distinct literacies in a society like our own. This issue’s keyword essay sets the tone for a collection of review essays that extend our capacity to respond critically to the many challenges of teaching language and literacy in a world of cultural difference and asymmetrical relations of power. Michael McDonald’s keyword essay on refugee literacy describes experiences that he concludes “do not easily mesh with dominant models of literacy, citizenship, and community, but […] nonetheless provide a compelling and important inroad to better understanding literacy in global and local contexts.” Abigail Montgomery’s look at John Duffy’s Writing from These Roots: Literacy in a Hmong-American Community represents a powerful illustration of the ways one historically distinct cultural group has responded to local literacies through acts of critical appropriation. The final three reviews turn their attention to some of the challenges of realizing social justice in institutions of higher education. Leah Durán’s take on Affirming Students’ Right to Their Own Language demonstrates how critical practitioners of today’s college writing classrooms can deploy a host of nuanced strategies designed to realize the promise of NCTE’s 1973 egalitarian vision. For those of us looking to strengthen community connections between high schools and universities, Lance Langdon’s critique of two texts, Maisha Fisher’s Writing in Rhythm: Spoken Word Poets in Urban Classrooms and Korina Jocson’s Youth Poets: Empowering Literacies In and Out of Schools, reminds us of the power of poetry as a source of inspiration and motivation. The final review, Lance Hendrickson’s engaging summation of the The Inaugural Summit of the National Consortium of Writing Across Communities, held in New Mexico in July 2012, testifies to “the hard work of imagining” and its potential rewards for communities across our country. [End Page 93] Copyright © 2013 Community Literacy Journal

“Willkommen im großen Karaoke, das wir Leben nennen”: Bas Böttcher und die Kulissen des Glücks

Bas Böttcher is one of Germany's most popular and respected spoken-word poets. In 2010 alone, he combined numerous performances in German-speaking countries with international appearances in India, Namibia, Italy, Greece, France, Luxembourg, and Canada. Yet, ever since the advent of poetry slams in the late 1980s and the subsequent resurgence and commercialization of spoken-word poetry, opinion has been divided about this entertaining rediscovery of the inherent orality of poetry. One of the most frequently quoted assessments of performance poetry is Jonathan Galassi's description of it as a “kind of karaoke of the written word.” One of Böttcher's own texts, entitled “Popopfer,” welcomes the reader/listener into a space that is identified as the “groß[e] Karaoke, das wir Leben nennen.” An analysis of other poems by Böttcher reveals a similar concern with themes of imitation and illusion. In “Alles in allem,” Böttcher locates the individual in a cinema-like world reminiscent of Plato's cave, where the concept of illusion is central. Similarly, in “Dran glauben,” illusion is identified as not only a key characteristic of our consumer-driven society, but also a factor necessary for the maintenance of happiness. This article traces Böttcher's exploration of the related themes of imitation, authenticity, illusion, and happiness and thus provides a response to Galassi's criticism of performance poetry.

»mit Zelt und Rucksack am Ufer der Duna« Zur Bedeutung des Neonomaden bei Bas Böttcher

In 2009, German spoken-word poet Bas Bottcher published his most recent volume of poetry; a slender book accompanied by a CD and entitled Neonomade. As a spoken-word poet who, in 2010 alone, combined numerous performances in German-speaking countries with international appearances in India, Namibia, Italy, Greece, France, Luxembourg and Canada, the eponymous neo-nomad can be interpreted as a reference to Bottcher’s own hectic tour schedule. Yet, given the prominent thematic role of mobility in Bottcher’s own work, the title also reflects a central thematic concern that Bartl has identified in the introduction to her edited volume Transittraume as a key characteristic of present-day society: mobility, life in transit (2009, 10). As members of today’s mobile society (Mobilitatsgesellschaft; Tully u. Baier 2006), in which concepts such as home, place, distance and proximity have acquired new meaning, Bottcher’s protagonists frequently find themselves confronted with redefined concepts of communication, inter-personal relationships and reality. In spite of the advent of numerous forms of virtual communication that allow for the separation of message and messenger, as well as messenger and recipient, reliable and effective communication still depends on the co-presence of all three elements (Urry in B J Sociol 54(2):155–173, 2003). Through a discussion of the volume’s title, I explain the importance of “new nomadism” for the communicatory success of the contemporary spoken-word poem.

“The Working Side of Art”: Richard Grant in Conversation with Anouk Lang

In this interview with Anouk Lang, the poet Richard Grant discusses his journey to becoming a professional performance poet: how he first came into contact with the dub poetry scene at university, his time as the Birmingham poet laureate in 2005-06, and his work with other spoken word poets at festivals, performances and school workshops around the UK. Topics covered include the role of live poetry in a culture in which sales of print publications are falling and new technologies are enabling writers to reach new audiences, poetry as a tool for confronting social issues such as racial conflict, the task of the poet laureate in relation to the city and the community, and generational, cultural and class divides in the contemporary British arts world.

Manning Up: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Los Angeles' Slam and Spoken Word Poetry Communities

This essay examines black masculine performativity in Da Poetry Lounge (DPL) and Leimert Park, two distinct but related poetry spaces in the Los Angeles slam and spoken word poetry scene. Parting from the popular discourse that figures these poetry communities as radically democratic, this essay works betwixt and between Mark Anthony Neal's “Strong Black Man” and New Black Man to examine the sexism and homophobia that is otherwise unchecked and undercritiqued in these poetic spaces. Within this frame, the Black male slam and spoken word poets in Los Angeles allow us to advance Neal's idea of the importance of a new construction of manhood by black men.