Intro:
Heya there SWC! I’m Sun, and welcome to my workshop on spoken word poetry! As one of the more recently resurfaced forms of performative writing, spoken word poetry has been embraced by many younger writers as a way to bring attention and emotion to the subjects they care about— thus its culture has become a flourishing source of activism and social change.

So, what is spoken word?

Spoken word is a subgenre of poetry that is specifically written to be performed in front of an audience. By focusing on such things as wordplay, sound, and intonation, poets can breathe power into their own words, express themselves more forcefully, and move their audiences directly.

Writing Spoken Word:
The very first thing to do when writing a spoken word poem is to choose a topic or experience you care about. A key part of spoken word is passion: if you don’t feel strongly about your subject, how will the audience? Now is your chance to get out your thoughts, whether they be on feminism, LGBTQ+ stigma, climate change inaction, the importance of family, or something else entirely.

Once you have your topic, jot down some points you want to make, and some possible ways you might want to say them. Does the pack of homophobes at your school remind you of hyenas? The people at the top of the ladder enabling climate change like wolves? Any abstract connections that spring to mind will make for great material to turn into metaphors and symbols ;) (See Zai’s great past workshop on Poetry, specifically the Literary Devices section.)

Once you get started on writing your poem, feel free to write however you’d like! Spoken word has very few limitations on its form due to the free and flowing nature of its performance, but conversely for that reasons there are a few important things that separate it from normal poetry writing:

1. How your poem sounds is ultimately going to be much more important than its format, grammar, or how it looks. If it makes sense to you, use brackets and dashes and commas as much as you like: nobody is going to see them, after all! The emphasis on your poem’s sound also means that sound mechanisms (see Zai’s workshop again) carry a lot of weight. Well placed alliteration could really drill a line into the audience’s minds, rhyming two lines could help tie them together, cacophony could make the audience more uncomfortable as you describe a situation.

2. Rhythm and repetition especially are key to spoken word poetry— both heavily influence the tone and mood of a piece. Rhythm, for example: a fast, uneven rhythm conveys urgency and tension; a slow, smooth rhythm peace and quiet. Repetition can then be used to repeat a key line to the audience by breaking up a set rhythm or adding to it, expanding its thematic value and making it more memorable.

• Ex. slow, lilting rhythm— Will There Really be a Morning, Emily Dickinson:
  “Will there really be a ‘Morning’? / Is there such a thing as ‘Day’? / Could I see it from the mountains / If I were as tall as they?”
  
• Uneven rhythm: Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Elliot. “Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table; / Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, / The muttering retreats / Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: / Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent”

3. Use a lot of imagery! Making your poem more vivid for the audience will make it more memorable and intense, and the subsequent emotional beats will hit harder.

Performing Spoken Word:
As spoken word is a performance art just as much as it is a written one, it is important to know not just how to write a spoken word poem but how to perform one. Any previous experience with acting and reciting poetry will help, but here are some basics:

1. Memorize it! Spoken word poetry is traditionally performed without any props or paper, so it’s important to know your poem in and out so you can focus on your performance and not just the words.

2. Watch other people perform! There are many, many excellent recordings out there of people reading their poems. (I would link some, but due to the aforementioned property of being written about topics people are passionate about, spoken word poems are often not appropriate for Scratch.) Sites such as button poetry are a great place to look for videos, and there are many lists on the internet where people compile their own personal favourites. (Once again, look and listen to poems at your own discretion.)

3. Posture, projection, eye contact, enunciation, facial expressions, modulation (your tone of voice, how you say words, when you go up and down) and all of that good acting stuff. What is the feeling of your poem? How do you want to move the audience? How can you alter your physicality and speech to convey this?

4. Practice. Figure out the above beforehand, what lines and words you want to put emphasis on, what your gestures are going to be, the speed you’ll talk at, etc. Get the specifics of your performance down beforehand!

Some spoken word performances: (again, look through at own discretion)
https://www.theodysseyonline.com/top-50-spoken-word-poems
https://www.goodnet.org/articles/5-incredibly-inspiring-pieces-spoken-word-poetry
Anything by Kevin Kantor

Resources:
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-spoken-word-poetry
https://blog.udemy.com/spoken-word-poetry/

First! Planning to do a spoken word poem about SoKeefe