Front and Center: Hip-Hop and Spoken Word Poetry in Academic Libraries

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Del Williams ◽  
Mark Stover
Keyword(s):  
Academic Libraries ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Spoken Word Poetry

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 ‘Mic Check. Can You Hear Me?’ Suheir Hammad and the Politics of Spoken Word Poetry

1970 ◽  
pp. 8-14
Author(s):  
Theri Alyce Pickens
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Racial Profiling ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Spoken Word Poetry ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
Transportation Security ◽  
Transportation Security Administration ◽  
Historical Relationship

“Mic check? One-two. One-two. Can you hear me?” asks spoken-word artist and poet Suheir Hammad onstage (Lathan, 2007). Make no mistake about this question; it is not part of the sound check, nor is it part of a rehearsal. This is her poem. The audience can obviously hear her, but the question is not as straightforward as it appears. Here, Hammad blends the art of emcee-ing (one of the four main elements of hip-hop culture), with the typical language of a sound check and her experience of being racially profiled in, presumably, an American airport. In this vein, “mic” is not only short for microphone, but also the name of the United States’ Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer, named “Mike”, who searches her bags. The question, “Can you hear me?”, is directed not only at the audience, but also at “Mike”. Hammad’s double speak continues throughout the poem, “Mic Check”, where she mobilizes the language of hip-hop to promulgate a stringent critique of the links between the United States’ historical relationship to imperialism and racial profiling targeted toward Arabs and those who supposedly appear Arab.

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.

Salinas, Raúl

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis G. Mendoza
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
Free Verse ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Prisoner Rights ◽  
Literary Output

The poetry, memoirs, essays, letters, prison journalism, and other forms of writing by Raúl Salinas (1934–2008) were grounded in his commitments to social justice and human rights. He was an early pioneer of contemporary Chicano pinto (prisoner) poetry whose work was characterized by a vernacular, bilingual, free verse aesthetics. Alongside other notables like Ricardo Sánchez, Luis Talamentez, Judy Lucero, and Jimmy Santiago Baca, Salinas helped make Chicana and Chicano prisoner rights an integral part of the agenda of the Chicana/o Movement through his writing and activism while incarcerated (1959–1972) and following his release. He was also a prolific prose writer in prison, and much of his journalism, reflective life writing, essays, and letters from his archives were published following his release. As important as his literary and political production in prisons was for establishing his literary recognition, it is important to note that the scope of his writing expands well beyond his prison experience. Though his literary and political interventions were important to a still emergent Chicana and Chicano literary, cultural, and political aesthetic, he was influenced by, but was not limited to, American and Latin American literary traditions. Given the scope of his life’s work, his indigenous and internationalist commitments, Salinas’ literary output make him a Xicanindio (indigenous identified Chicano) poet, a Latino internationalist, as well as a spoken word jazz and hip-hop artist whose work engaged, adapted and transformed elements of the American literary canon.

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.

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