Wild about ‘slam’ poetry
Tom Pinney
I am friends with my 11th grade English teacher on Facebook now, and watching what she’s doing with her students is really inspiring.
It seems like every time she posts a picture of her students, she talks about something else they’re doing that’s just super cool. One of the things I wish I could have done while I was one of her students: they host a poetry slam once a year.
I know what you’re thinking, Gen-Xers and baby boomers: poetry slam? Allow me to explain.
Millennials have introduced a new format of poetry into the echelon of modern literature called “slam poetry.”
And despite how it sounds, it’s not poetry dedicated to making others feel bad about themselves. It’s about telling your story through a natural rhythmic – not necessarily rhyme-y – poetry.
Slam has existed for several years, but it became very popular when, in 2013, a poem by Neil Hilborn entitled “OCD” was published on YouTube and garnered tens of millions of hits. And just like that, slam poetry became mainstream.
Some say slam poetry – and it’s slightly more musical cousin, spoken word – evolved from rap. Some say it evolved from Shakespearean sonnets and soliloquies.
Regardless of where it came from, thank God it’s here.
Slam poetry and spoken word are such beautiful narrative forms, and you can’t tell me otherwise because I can’t stop listening to it. Much like music, they speak to me in ways I could not be spoken to before, and make me feel things I would otherwise not feel.
And I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true. Slam poetry and spoken word are just… beautiful. And that’s the only way to describe them.
Slam poetry and spoken word are so beautiful because they are so honest. The writers and performers don’t just sing about parts of their life and chop up the words in order to fit music, they just tell their stories to a rhythm.
I’ll give you several examples. All of these can be found using cursory YouTube searches if you want to listen for yourself, which you really should do.
From a slam poem entitled “21” by Patrick Roche:
“15. I come up with the theory that my father started drinking again maybe because he found out I’m gay. Like if he could make everything else blurry maybe somehow I’d look straight.”
From a slam poem “To The Boys Who May One Day Date My Daughter” by Jesse Parent:
“If you break her heart, I will hear it snap with the ear I pressed against her mother’s belly. The elbow I cradled her head in will send a message to my fist. My cheeks are attuned to her lips, I will know if they tremble.”
From “OCD”:
“Usually, when I obsess over things, I see germs crawling into my skin, I see an endless succession of cars. She was the first beautiful thing I ever got stuck on.”
From a spoken word song, “The Search” by Australian spoken word artist Joel McKerrow and the Mysterious Few:
“So lift up your skirts and run the rivertide, for your faith is worth more than just air in the sky. It is flesh, and it is blood, and it is mud, and it is mire. So run, like 50 tons of shattered memories aren’t enough to hold you down. Run like you are falling from a cliff into the arms of a lover. Run like the eight legs of a spider were not enough for you. Run like your world is about to begin!!”
You can see where some people believe that slam poetry and spoken word got its origins from Shakespeare, because, wow.
Sorry, I said that wrong. I meant, wow.
And the cool thing about spoken word is that spoken word is backed by music. You should hear the way the music builds behind McKerrow’s words at that point in the song.
And even these excerpts from these pieces are not enough to do them justice. I’ve heard live versions of two Mysterious Few pieces that were different than the studio recordings, because McKerrow adapts some of his words based on his feeling at the time while keeping the meaning of the original piece intact.
Seriously, go listen to these and so many other offerings on YouTube. Listen to slam poets like Robbie Q. Telfer and George Watsky, or just search “Button Poetry” and be enthralled for a couple of hours.
Go download Joel McKerrow and the Mysterious Few’s album, both the paid one on iTunes and the free live one they have on their website. While you’re at it, take a listen to spoken word artists like Propaganda and Listener.
Thank me later.
While some may say millennials are too emotional, we have become more in-touch with our emotions and more able to express them through mediums other generations didn’t have. We take the words we want to say and tell them to the world through the rhythmic catharsis that is slam poetry.
Or, in the words of Joel McKerrow, from a song of his entitled “We Tell Stories”:
“We drench the world a new color, call forth what is deeper, pull wide the curtain of separation, show beauty for what she is. We tell stories.”
