Frank DiMaria
Short Paper Grammar
“Equate rhyme with reason, Sun with season”
According to Shiv Raj Desai and Marsh Tyson, spoken word poetry is “a form of poetry that utilizes the strengths of our communities: oral tradition, call-and-response, home languages, storytelling and resistance. Spoken word poetry is usually performed for an audience and must be heard.” I think of poets like Saul Williams, or rapper Common, who implore such techniques through their art. Lines like, “We do hereby declare reality unkempt by the changing standards of dialogue/Statements, such as, “keep it real", especially when punctuating or anticipating modes of ultra-violence inflicted psychologically/or physically or depicting an unchanging rule of events will hence forth be seen as retro-active/and not representative of the individually determined is,” can be heard in Saul Williams’ Coded Language. The lines tell a story and are barbaric yelps crying out for a place to be heard. Williams demonstrates the African American English language and implores a code switching technique to reach a level of comfortableness in expressing feeling. If I showed my students Williams’ poetry and had them write their own to present, I would not only be embracing who my students are, creating a student centered environment, but I would be also teaching them that there is a place for them to be whom they are and what they want to be.
What does this look like in a classroom? Well, first off I would show my students some videos of spoken word poets performing to help my students start seeing what spoken word actually looks like. I would want my students to see the emotion and language that the poets are using as a model for my students to start writing their own poetry. Then I could start out my lesson/writing workshop with a simple question to my class - “what do you all wonder?” I want my students to look at the world and ask questions and figure out essentially why things are they way they are in the world. Students could come up with a list of questions that they have about the world like, “why do good things come to those who wait,” or “why must people die,” or “what will I do when I am older.” Letting students generate these kinds of questions serves as a good prompt for writing poetry. I have always found that writing poetry is a response to my own personal questions about the world and it might be a way for my students to do the same. I would have my students initially answer the questions they came up with in as many ways as possible then have them turn those answers into spoken word poetry. I would encourage my students to put expressive language into their poetry - words that really “come off” the page, writing to convey meaning. I would strongly encourage my students to also use whatever dialect/language they deem appropriate and comfortable. This is not to say I would say, “use Ebonics only.” I would simply encourage a level of comfortably. If it’s Spanish English or Ebonics/African American English is fine by me. What I care about is that my students are learning to play with language and learn to articulate their own ideas, feelings, and memories. Another prompt I could use is to ask my students to think about an experience, either really good or really bad, and start writing down all the emotions that they can remember they had during the experience. Then write down various instances or scenes they can remember from the experience and weave in emotions while describing the experience. Through editing and rewriting, students will be able to produce a powerful poem about a personal memory that they had.
After students wrote their poetry I would have them perform their poems, as after all, spoken word is a form of poetry that needs to come alive through performance. I could set up my classroom like a theater and have my students recite their poems over songs or movies in the background and create a true poets café atmosphere in the room. Students could explain their poem after they read it to give insight to their thinking process and take ownership for their work.
If students opened up through this method, “this proves to be an opportunity to understand the context in which our students are coming from. Once we can familiarize ourselves with the struggles our students grapple with internally, both in and outside of school, we can connect with them on a more human, personal level. More importantly, by simply listening to our students and creating a space where they can begin to articulate their thoughts and ideas in written and spoken form, we can further assist them in developing a love for written and spoken word.” My goal as a teacher must, and will be to truly listen to my students. Spoken word poetry not only allows students to write, speak, and perform in a comfortable way, it also allows me, the educator, to understand a different culture, a different language, and who my students are and can be inside and out of the classroom.
Desai, Shiv Raj, and Tyson Marsh. "Weaving Multiple Dialects in the Classroom Discourse: Poetry and Spoken Word as a Critical Teaching Tool." Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education 9.2 (2005): 71-90. ERIC. EBSCO. Web. 13 Sept. 2011.
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