Spoken Word Blog

Michael Paul Williams recently reported about a program for youths that connects famous poets, hip-hop, and spoken word. He says:

Edgar Allan Poe emerged from a fractured family to spawn dark, graphically violent tales from his vivid imagination.

The poet and author of “The Raven” possessed a self-destruc tive streak and picked fights with his fellow artists. Ladies loved him. Alcohol didn’t, but he drank anyway. He died young and mysteriously, and a shadowy stranger annually leaves roses and cognac at his gravesite.

It’s a story worthy of Tupac or Biggie Smalls. And yesterday, at Richmond’s Edgar Allan Poe Museum, a group of aspiring rappers and songwriters listened intently.

The mostly teenage group is participating in Finding Your Way Through the Art of Songwriting, a pilot program that seeks to engage and expand their minds through hip-hop.

Yesterday, they were gently rapping, rapping . . . well, if not at Poe’s chamber door, at least among his artifacts at the Shockoe Bottom museum.

The program is the brainchild of Jack Knight, a Chesapeake resident and songwriter for Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Entertainment.

Knight says the program is about more than music. He wants the teens to learn how to make positive choices and think globally, critically and collaboratively.

“We have a lot of kids in our group who do poetry and spoken word,” Knight said. “Edgar Allan Poe had a great imagination. And before you do something, you have to think it.”

“Hopefully, it will be attractive for these young people who may be disillusioned by traditional social service programs or feel there’s no place for them there,” Gordon said. “We want them to look at this as their place.”

In addition to helping teens find their way, the program might change minds about hip-hop so that rapping, unlike that bird of yore, is viewed ominously nevermore.

Read entire Time Dispatch article by Michael Paul Williams.

The comparison between Edgar Allen Poe’s biography with Tupac Shakur’s. Anyway, this program sounds great. It sounds like an effective way to entice youths to embrace their poetic passion, and interest themselves in great poets of all types and genres.

What do you think?

April Phillips recently wrote an article about a show in Norfolk to promote student’s interest in poetry with Spoken Word. She writes:

Many high school students groan or even snore through English classes where Emily Dickinson , Walt Whitman and Robert Frost are studied.

Most fail to make the connection between the icons of American verse and the rap artists they listen to on their iPods between classes.

Jeff Hewitt – a Norfolk mainstay of spoken-word poetry – and a core group of other spoken-word poets are hoping to change that and give the image of poetry a 21st century makeover.

Spoken word is an art form that combines poetry and theatrical elements to bring the written words to life in a performance setting.

Hewitt believes that poetry is something that lives and breathes and that the tumult and controversy in the lives and works of poets should not be glossed over. He thinks the tendency to play down those rough edges is the reason many young people are turned off.

Read entire Virginian-Pilot by April Phillips.

I agree with Hewitt. Not just with poetry and literature, but also with other interesting subjects such as history, contemporary schools remove all controversy and reduce the subject into a boring and meaningless pile of random factoids. Anyone who ever attended a spoken word show sees it as how exciting, powerful, and interesting.

Personally, I think many students learn more watching spoken word for one night than attending school. Where spoken word offers a real, emotional, and interesting presentation; schools merely offer overly-censored, washed-down, boring ramblings.

What do you think?

Boston University, celebrated Martin Luther King’s birthday with festival of arts including spoken word:

Boston University celebrated [Dr. Martin Luther King’s] message of equality in a celebration of song, dance and spoken word in a packed George Sherman Union’s Metcalf Hall.

“The Word: A Celebration of the Poet, the Preacher and the Spoken Word Artist” gave nearly 500 community members a look at the interpretation of King’s message as seen by a choir, two reverends and a handful of poets.

BU hip-hop dance group Soulstice danced to “No Weapon,” a performance Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore said reflected the peaceful reconciliation King preached.

“When I asked them what they intended to do, they said, ‘we want to try to show, not only with the music, but also with our collaborative effort, a little bit of what Dr. King’s message was all about,’” Elmore said when introducing Soulstice.

Read entire Daily Free Press article by Jenna Nierstedt.

I’m glad to see the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized in any way. Nonetheless, I am especially pleased to see him recognized and remembered through spoken word, because generally I think the common messages in spoken word match the wise teachings of King, in their promotion of love, justice, and freedom.

What do you think?