Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person.
Interpretation
Spoken word poetry is an engaging art form that emphasizes performance and audience interaction.
This quote by Sarah Kay highlights the dynamic nature of spoken word poetry, distinguishing it from traditional poetry by emphasizing the need for its auditory experience. It suggests that this form of poetry is meant to be performed and felt rather than merely read, engaging an audience beyond the written word and inviting them into a shared emotional experience.
In practice
Using this quote during a poetry slam to emphasize the importance of performance.
When I hear other people's stories, I like to believe that they contribute to my 'Encyclopedia of Human Experience.' The stories I hear help me expand my definition of what love is, what pain feels like, what sacrifice means, what laughter can do.
Life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.
But in Hiroshima, some people were wiped clean away, leaving only a wristwatch or a diary page. So no matter that I have inhibitions to fill all my pockets, I keep trying, hoping that one day I'll write a poem I can be proud to let sit in a museum exhibit as the only proof I existed.
If I should have a daughter, instead of "Mom," she's going to call me "Point B," because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me.
Not all poetry wants to be storytelling. And not all storytelling wants to be poetry. But great storytellers and great poets share something in common: They had something to say, and did.
To me, having the courage to tell your own story goes hand in hand with having the curiosity and humility to listen to others' stories.
Everything that I saw became something to be made, and it had to be exactly as it was, with nothing added. It was a new freedom: there was no longer the need to compose. The subject was there already made, and I could take from everything. It all belonged to me: a glass roof of a factory, with its broken and patched panels, lines on a road map, a corner of a Braque painting, paper fragments in the street. It was all the same: anything goes.
Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.
What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song.
Comics are expensive. Donβt make me resent the money I spend buying yours. Every single moment in your script must either move the story along or demonstrate something important about the characters β preferably both β and every panel that does neither is a sloppy waste of space.
You I am sure will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity and be more of an artist, and 'load every rift' of your subject with ore.
When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet's task to turn it into an audience.
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