Tell the Story, Speak the Truth: Creating a Third Space Through Spoken Word Poetry

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-289
Author(s):  
Katelyn Jones ◽  
Jen Scott Curwood
Keyword(s):  
Third Space ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Spoken Word Poetry

scholarly journals Love and homophobia in Malawi's spoken-word poetry movement

Africa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-387
Author(s):  
Harri Englund
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Spoken Word Poetry ◽  
The People ◽  
Popular Interest ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Selection Of

AbstractBy the early 2010s, a number of Malawian poets in their twenties had begun to substitute the elliptical expression of earlier generations with a language that resonated with popular idioms. As poetry directed at ‘the people’, its medium is spoken word rather than print, performed to live audiences and distributed through CDs, radio programmes and the internet. Crafted predominantly in Chichewa, the poems also address topics of popular interest. The selection of poetry presented here comes from a female and a male poet, who, unbeknown to each other, prepared poems sharply critical of homosexuality and what they regarded as its foreign and local advocacy. The same poets have also gained success for their love poems, which have depicted intimate desires in remarkably compatible ways for both women and men. The poets who performed ‘homophobic’ verse went against popular gender stereotypes in their depictions of romantic love and female and male desires. This introductory essay, as a contribution toAfrica's Local Intellectuals series, discusses the aesthetic challenges that the new poets have launched in the context of Malawi's modern poetry. With regard to gender relations in their love poems, the introduction also considers the poets’ possible countercultural contribution despite their avowed commitment to perform for ‘the people’.

‘Why don’t you let me flow in my space?’

Matatu ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 444-455
Author(s):  
Hugh Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Women Performers ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Spoken Word Poetry ◽  
Gender Based

Abstract The practice of performance or ‘spoken word’ poetry has gained a significant foothold among the youth in urban Namibia in the last two decades. While this poetry has been put to many socio-political uses, one of the main ones has been a protest against patriarchal elements in Namibian society and culture, and an outcry against Namibia’s high rates of gender-based violence. Patriarchal aspects of Namibia’s national culture are often explicitly linked to violence and to the intersectional nature of oppression. Spoken word poetry has also often given LGBT+ women a space to speak out against their oppression and to normalise their existence. This article shows how women performers have used and modified the conventions of poetry and song to get this challenging—in the Namibian context often radical—message across. The paper argues that poetry in this context has the potential to approximate a localised ‘public sphere’ where inclusive discourse can be held around social issues—bearing mind that people are not excluded from this discourse because of arbitrary reasons such as gender or sexuality.

Knowledge of Self: Possibilities for Spoken Word Poetry, Hip Hop Pedagogy, and “Blackout Poetic Transcription” in Critical Qualitative Research

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-82
Author(s):  
Anthony Keith ◽  
Crystal Leigh Endsley
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Spoken Word Poetry ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Critical Qualitative Research ◽  
Hip Hop Pedagogy ◽  
Poetic Transcription ◽  
Alternative Identities

This article traces the development of Blackout Poetic Transcription (BPT) as a critical methodology for artist-scholars engaged with Hip Hop pedagogy in higher education spaces.  We include Keith’s outline of the BPT method and Endsly’s first hand account of implementing the practice in an undergraduate classroom. Together, the authors grapple with mainstream and alternative identities within their Hip Hop praxis as spoken word artists and educators.

scholarly journals And the Students Shall Lead Us: Putting Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy in Conversation With Universal Design for Learning in a Middle-School Spoken Word Poetry Unit

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 226-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick Coppola ◽  
Rebecca Woodard ◽  
Andrea Vaughan
Keyword(s):  
Universal Design ◽  
Universal Design For Learning ◽  
Classroom Community ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Spoken Word Poetry ◽  
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy ◽  
Design For Learning ◽  
Grade Classroom

This case study explores how a research-practice partnership worked to cross-pollinate culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) over the course of a 9-week spoken word poetry unit in a seventh-grade classroom. The unit reflected CSP’s commitment to linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism (e.g., centering culture- and identity-focused writing) while also intentionally embedding principles of UDL (e.g., multiple means of representation, action, expression, and engagement). The analysis examines how and why some students in this classroom centered dis/ability in their poetry writing and how the design and implementation of the unit invited more complex understandings of cultures and identities. Findings suggest that CSP supported students in making their identities more visible in the classroom, while the integration of UDL principles eliminated barriers for participation. Both were integral in focal students’ engagements with aspects of their identities throughout the unit. Ultimately, the unit’s design facilitated the movement of the focal students from the periphery to more centripetal roles within the classroom community.

Performance

2020 ◽  
pp. 256-273
Author(s):  
Emily Spiers
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Real World ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Spoken Word Poetry ◽  
The Real

‘Performativity’ became a watchword of cultural theory at the turn of the millennium. Yet, while ideas of performative play and the fluidity of identity have gained much traction in conceptual debates about the experience of being human, large chunks of literary theory still skirt past the question of how to account for actual performances by humans in the real world. What happens when literature stops being just a text on a page and unfolds within a communal setting as a live event? In her chapter, Emily Spiers demonstrates how spoken-word poetry makes particularly apparent an underlying and little conceptualized phenomenon that applies for all literature: the ‘perpetually unstable dynamic of literary connectivity’. Through the frame concept of ‘worlding’ as applied to the Badilisha online poetry platform, the chapter shows how the author–performer and audience share the tangible unfolding of ‘a potentiality of the literary act in time’ at the live scene of a spoken-word performance.

scholarly journals Keep it “real”: the co-construction of authentic performance and audience connection in poetry slam competitions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gloria Eid
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Professional Communication ◽  
Symbolic Interactionist ◽  
Spoken Word Poetry ◽  
Message Production ◽  
Interactionist Perspective ◽  
Poetry Reading ◽  
Audience Connection ◽  
Performance Strategies

With the poetry slam competition – a live, competitive spoken word poetry reading – as context for this project, the study explores the concepts of authenticity and audience connection as they relate to message production and meaning-making processes in the field of professional communication. This project uses a symbolic interactionist perspective and Goffman’s (1959) theory of dramaturgy to investigate the poet-audience relationship and discover how a display of authentic performance works to achieve the goal of audience connection. The researcher interviewed six slam poets from the Greater Toronto and Southwestern Ontario area about their experiences in the poetry slam world. Results from the interviews reveal that authenticity is co-constructed between poet and audience, involving a coalescence of private preparation strategies and onstage performance strategies that help craft a sense of credibility and honesty from the poet that, in turn, contribute to achieving successful audience connection by the slam poet as performer.

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