poetree | Entries tagged with content: video

Introduction
Poetry is, to many, a medium of love. What springs to mind are Shakespearean sonnets and awkward limericks in Valentine's day cards and how to impress your 7th-grade crush. ( Read on... )

Friendship as Intimacy
Romantic love may be passionate and exciting and able to sweep you off your feet... but friendship will always be there to buy you ice cream and say, you were too good for him/her, anyway - and it won't say, I told you so even though it probably did. ( Read on... )

Featured Poem: An Origin Story
Project V.O.I.C.E. founders Phil Kaye & Sarah Kay are two friends who found each other through a mutual gift for poetry, storytelling, and the spoken word. ( Listen & Read, plus things to pay attention to )

Optional Challenge
Is there a special friend in your life who you feel you need to say something to or about after reading/listening? Take this opportunity to write a poem of any format for or about them and share it in the comments. I'll share a silly little Haiku below, and will post a longer poem in the comments to get the ball rolling.

( A friendship poem by yours truly )

Additional Reading
The Vinegar Club by Andrea Gibson
Love and Friendship by Emily Brontë
Helen Steiner Rice also wrote a number of poems about friendship, which you can find together in a collection here.

cadenzamuse

I discovered slam poetry through Hillary Kobernick. I was vaguely aware of performance poetry before. But a friend led me to The St. Sebastian Review (a queer Christian literary magazine that is Relevant To My Interests), and The St. Sebastian Review led me to Hillary Kobernick, who was at the time a Masters of Divinity student in classes with some of my friends at Emory University, and Hillary Kobernick's blog (hillarykobernickpoetry.tumblr.com) introduced me to slam poetry.

I tell you about these serendipitous connections because a: I think that spoken-word poetry is an exercise in fostering serendipitous connections and b: I think that Hillary in particular is a curator of these connections. Her blog is a mix of quotes and essays and videos of slam poets and spontaneous thoughts, and I think her ability to make space for disparate things to mingle and grow together comes through in her poetry as well.

In "The Last Judgement," Hillary connects Michelangelo's image of God creating Adam on the Sistene Chapel Ceiling and his painting "The Last Judgement" with various people's beliefs about sin and love, informed by her political and religious beliefs.

*

"The Last Judgement" by Hillary Kobernick
(transcript not currently available)

Things to Discuss:

When I hear/watch spoken-word poetry, I'm reminded of the best kind of late night freeflowing conversation, where you get to the end and ask each other, "How did we get here?" So...how did Hillary get here? What connections did she make that were unexpected to you as she made them, and which ones only seemed unexpected after the fact?
Wikipedia quotes Bob Holman, a poetry activist, calling spoken-word poetry "the democratization of poetry." He also says, "The spoken word revolution is led a lot by women and by poets of color. It gives a depth to the nation's dialogue that you don't hear on the floor of Congress." What oppressed or minority ideas are given a voice in Hillary's poetry? Do you react differently to these ideas in Hillary's poem than you do when you encounter them in other forms?
In Sarah Kay's TED talk, she discusses how her first impression of spoken word poetry was that it was angry. Do you find that to be the case? Why or why not?
There is an improv word association game that provides you with two prompts, and you try to associate your way from one prompt to the second. I'm going to open a round of that in the comments, just for fun. Feel free to use this game or any of the comments here as inspiration for a creative work.

Things to Try:

Check out Hillary's blog. Maybe even use one of Hillary's writing prompts to write a poem.
Watch another of Hillary's slam poems on YouTube. My second favorite is An Open Letter to Lynn Westmoreland.
Hillary is part of Atlanta's Art Amok! poetry slam team, which is currently raising money to go to the National Poetry Slam. Consider donating at their indiegogo page.

cadenzamuse

Hi! I'm

cadenzamuse, and I'm hosting a week on some Atlanta spoken word/slam poets that I like.

I am not a slam or spoken word poet, so I don't know very much about it other than a: it's an out loud/performed type of poetry and b: I like it. So I turned to Wikipedia to learn about the basics.

Wikipedia says that modern spoken-word poetry originated from the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance and was also shaped by the beatniks. It has deep roots in Black culture and politics.

Poetry slams are spoken-word poetry competitions that started in the mid-1980s. Slam poetry has roots in dub poetry and hip-hop (which are also both often political art forms).

But that's really dry. So how about some spoken word self-definitions?

Become a slam poet in five steps, by Gayle Danley
( Transcript from Youtube, with ersatz stanza breaks by cadenzamuse )

Some questions to discuss:

Have you encountered spoken word poetry before? What have you liked or disliked about it?
How do you define spoken word poetry?
How is spoken word poetry similar to or different from other forms of poetry developed by oppressed populations?

Some things to try:

Write a spoken word poem following the steps laid out by Gayle Danley. Feel free to share it with us!
If you have some extra time, watch another excellent introduction to spoken word poetry at the TED Talk "If I Should Have a Daughter" by Sarah Kay.

raze

Today I'll be sharing with you a few poems from queer poet and social activist Andrea Gibson. Gibson was the first winner of the Women’s World Poetry Slam and has five albums and two books of her poems, which touch on subjects of class, race, sexuality, gender, love, and spirituality. Many of her poems could be classified as queer activist poetry as they tackle social injustice towards QUILTBAG individuals.

I've already shared with you the Prop8-inspired poem I Do during activist poetry week. Today I'm sharing three poems by Gibson. The first, Letter to the Playground Bully is an upbeat piece intended to be appropriate for younger children while still tackling the issue of bullying, which has created an epidemic of suicide among gay youth. The second, Swingset, is about the experience of being gender queer in a world that craves those black and white lines of gender identity. The last, Ashes, was written in response to the disturbing phenomenon of gays, both in and out of the military, being burned to death for being homosexual.

As a forewarning: Gibson writes with a sledgehammer rather than a fine quill pen, so these poems do contain some profanity, slurs, and references to anti-queer violence. So, TW for anyone who might have difficulty with hearing as much.

Letter To The Playground Bully

Swingset

Ashes

Feel free to share your reactions and comments below!

raze

As I will be away all day today, I'm posting this one early - hope you don't feel too inundated, folks!

The Gay Rights community is well known for using a broad scope of creative media - including art, poetry, music, plays, etc. - to convey the struggles of the homosexual community. Considered by many to be the civil rights struggle of our day and age, the issue of gay rights has been at the forefront of US policy making in recent years, marked by victories and defeats in the areas of gay marriage, adoption, workers' rights, health care, and more.

Several noteworthy gay poets are currently making big waves in the modern "poetry Renaissance," and today's poem comes from slam poet Andrea Gibson, winner of the Women's World Poetry Slam and self-described queer activist. She has toured universities and venues across the United States delivering hard-hitting poems on a wide range of human rights issues, her poems making it as far as Utah's conservative state legislature (you can imagine the scandal when the poet's identity was revealed in this context!).

"I Do" was written in response to California's Prop 8 and will be presented today in the form of a video, as Gibson's poetry is arguably best appreciated performed. Text is below; I did not post the transcript because I do not know if it falls within the guidelines of the community's posting.

Transcript or, look into her published works, The Madness Vase and Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns available at andreagibson.com

Noteworthy Related Reading
Does Your House Have Lions? by Sonia Sanchez, 1998 (book/poem). Written as an epic poem, this touching book details the life of Sanchez's homosexual brother, who died of AIDs, and serves as an eye-opening experience about what it is to be gay and black in America.

Mere Baba by Iftikhar Nasim (poem). Written by Urdu's first openly gay poet, this short but powerful poem (presented here in multiple languages for your viewing pleasure) brings to light the emotional anguish of asking questions about one's sexuality. Nasim is considered a highly significant figure to the Indian and Pakistani gay rights community, an activist voice in a culture where open homosexuality is often met with brutal violence.

If you have any gay rights poetry you'd like to share, or comments on the reads (and listens) shared today, please post in the comments!