Hey guys,
So I'm really into poetry, spoken word poetry really, and I wanted to share this clip with all of you. The clip is of a woman named Sarah Kay and she has been preforming spoken word poetry since she was 14 years old and began the V.O.I.C.E project which helps poetry and self-expression in schools.
Her poem "B" moved me to tears the first time I heard it (the first poem she preforms in the clip).
http://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kay_if_i_should_have_a_daughter.html
I wanted to ask all of you, your opinions of her work. Would the impact have be different if you had read it on a page of paper rather than listened to her preform it? Do you think it makes a difference to actually see the performance rather than listen to it? Would it have been different to see it live? What did it make you think about or feel?
Have fun guys!
20 comments:
Thank you SO much for posting this, Lyndsey! I would actually encourage everyone to watch the entire broadcast (c'mon, it's only 18 minutes!):). She's so full of life and optimism that it's really quite contagious.
Excellent!
First of all, that was beautiful. I definitely prefer spoken word poetry as opposed to written poetry because the speakers give the piece energy. It was great to watch Sarah Kay express this poem because her facial expressions were priceless. I don't that that the piece would have been as effective if she hadn't preformed it because the poem would have been a story, without too much emotion. I listened to this twice, once only audio and the second time I watched Sarah Kay perform it. Her actual performance was the most moving. Her expression and her arm movements helped get the point across and sort of made me feel like I was watching a movie about everything she would tell her daughter. Not only was her voice soothing, but her movements were very fluid. I loved all her references to superheroes too!
I really enjoyed this! I agree with Kathryn, the full clip is great. I love her passion.
I love written poetry, but there is something powerful about spoken word poetry. Seeing the poet perform their piece makes it much more personal (and it's way better than a droning reading with no life or emotion).
Later on in the clip, Sarah talks about how spoken word poetry brings together her two loves: poetry and theatre. Something I've always loved about theatre is the in-the-moment, human immediacy of a performance. Written words on a page can be very moving, but it's a different experience to actually see someone experience the emotion and meaning of the text. I like to think of theatre as living, breathing text, and spoken word poetry seems to be similar.
Even though we're watching this online, instead of live, I think you can get the sense of performer-audience exchange, which is another thing that I think makes live performance unique and engaging.
I wonder how other poems that weren't intended to be performed (Shakespeare's sonnets, or Emily Dickenson's reclusive works, for instance) would stand up to this kind of translation. And I noticed that Sarah Kay didn't really rhyme, while other spoken words poets I've seen do incorporate rhyme and wordplay. If you didn't know it was a spoken word poem, you might not realize it right away. This makes her performance feel very natural; would rhyming make it feel less natural?
I agree with everyone! This clip is so amazing :) I love it!
Her words are so meaningful. I love how each sentence has an underlying meaning and is clearly easy to relate to. I liked watching her because she was so animated when talking. Her tone of voice connects so well to what she is saying. I do think if I were to read the poem off of paper, I would probably not have been as affected by it as I was when listening and watching. I can feel her passion for poem and the overall meaning. It is hard sometimes to get the personal connection that is intended when you are reading a poem. I think that the difference between watching online and live would not have been that big. Overall I think that whether you see a recording of a live performance or the actual live performance, the effect can still be the same.
I enjoyed how Sarah Kay was so intuitive of her poetry. The meaning is better expressed with her motions and her way of saying things. It's incredible to have poetry share such an impact on its audience. I agree with Claudia when she says that Sarah's voice is very soothing. It's the perfect way of putting it. All the things she is saying that she wants to teach her daughter is being told to the audience in a way that is calm and easy to understand. It flows really nicely, I feel like her daughter with the messages that she is sending.
I was super excited to see that you posted this video. My sister had told me to watch it a little over a week ago and I loved it. I have always had a soft spot for spoken word poetry. I love the impact of seeing the performance, and being able to hear the emotion and emphasis that was intended to be expressed. When reading poetry, it often falls flat for me, not because it isn’t brilliant or moving or whatever else it is supposed to be, but rather because I don’t always see what it is that I am supposed to find. I can pick out strings of words that are beautiful together or strike me for whatever reason they do. I can love the words and still miss the point. Hearing or seeing the performance of a spoken word poem I almost always feel that I can find what the poem is trying to let me see. I get swept up into the poem instead of trying to find a way in.
After I watched the video, I looked about some other clips of her performing and they were all pretty great. Though I think the perfect way to experience her poems and a lot of other poems, whether they were intended to be spoken word poems or not, is to hear them aloud. Poems are written as an expression of a human voice, and though we can understand the words just by reading them silently in our own heads, I think it's important to not only understand the words, but to hear them. The impact changes and increases. Everyone always tell you to read your essays and papers out loud to catch any mistakes. Though we aren't looking for mistakes when we read poetry aloud, the idea is still the same. By not only reading, but listening to words we can catch things we didn't get the first time around.
Sarah- I feel like rhyming would restrict the ability of the performer to keep the flow going, and maybe even stop the intensity of the tone they are using. I tried to imagine the classic poems as a spoken word piece, but the older way of speaking sort of killed it for me! Maybe spoken poetry is supposed to just go with emotions and not follow any rules. That is the kind of poetry I liked to hear so maybe that is why I liked it so much! I agree with Marissa, sometimes I just can't understand what the poet is trying to show so it defeats the purpose because I miss the beautiful imagery.
Everybody seems to be coming back to the idea that hearing the poem performed aloud makes it easier to understand the meaning and emotion behind the words.
I completely agree, and wanted to bring up some similarities and differences I see between spoken word and a "traditional" type of theatre performance. As I was thinking about this video more, I began to wonder - what is the difference between a spoken word performance and a theatrical monologue?
The spoken word performance seems more obviously personal. Sarah Kay is speaking her own thoughts and conveying her own emotions, whereas in a monologue an actor is portraying the thoughts/emotions of that particular character (which may or may not be blended with the actor's own emotions, depending on which mode of acting theory you want to follow)
Because of this heightened, intimate, personal emotion, I agree with @Claudia in that spoken word poetry seems to focus on emotion and feeling, and it would be more difficult to translate an older, more classical poem into spoken word without it feeling awkward.
At the same time, though, I agree with everybody saying that reading a piece out loud adds so much life to it; when you read something out loud, you listen more to the words, to the rhythms and shapes they make as you say them. In this way, I think there is value in at least reading a work out loud, even if you don't perform it as spoken word.
I think there is great power in the immediacy of the spoken word (not the performance, but just in the sense of reading out loud). We listen more, the words become more than images on a page as they become invisible yet real things that we speak and hear; I think this is what gives life and energy to both theatre and spoken word performance.
There are three important aspects which I think make spoken word poem meaningful and beautiful. I looked up some other videos and only listened rather than watched. It made me realize that in order for the poem to be great spoken word performance, each element must be strong on it's own. The actual (at one point probably) written words must be meaningful. The poets voice must be expressive. And the poets body language, the small( or large) gestures with their hands or faces or just his or her stage presence must engage the audience and convey the emotion of the poem.
Spoken word poetry is beautiful. It's very different from poetry read from a piece of paper. The emotions the author tries to convey are put out there, for the audience to easily understand, it's almost impossible for the audience to misunderstand the author or try to find a different meaning. Sarah Kay was really good at portraying the emotions she was talking about in both poems. It takes a lot of talent to do spoken word poetry because besides having to memorize poems the poet must also act out the poem. (The acting must be challenging because usually spoken word poems are very emotional.)
I think there is a difference between watching the performance of spoken word poetry and listening to it. At a live performance the poet's face and body movements add an effect to the poem being recited. Sarah used many hand motions and face expressions that added to the effect her poems had on the audience. The way she was able to manipulate her voice was pretty awesome, when portraying pride it was strong and deep, when speaking about her timidness it was shaky and quiet.
The first time I heard of spoken word poetry was when I came to UNM and I instantly became fascinated by it. It's very impressive.
I usually can't get into poetry in any form - written, spoken, or slam. However, because this flowed so naturally I actually enjoyed it. I've always been inclined toward short stories, and I felt like her poems flowed like stories. The gestures and emphasis on certain words, as well as her facial expressions made the piece so powerful, in a way that can't be produced from words on a page.
Sarah Parro originally mentioned in her post that if you didn't know this was spoken word poetry, you might not realize it right away. I definitely had a few moments when I wondered if she was transitioning into a poem or not. I think it has a lot to do with how naturally Sarah Kay performs. I liked that she broke down how she puts together poetry, what inspires her, and her method for “tricking” students into creating their own poetry. It made everything more real to me, especially because poetry is a very alien medium to me.
That was one of the most touching clips I've yet to see. Everything she said had meaning and purpose and I FELT everything because she was so true to herself. I loved how her excitement and love of life carried into her poetry and was seen in her fast paced beat, hand gestures, and facial expressions. Her words were so powerful and yet when you see her facial expressions along with the words you get a more 2D dimension of her thoughts. While watching the 18 minutes I deviated from the video to look up Anderson Cooper ( I had to!) and even when not seeing her expressions and body language she had such a powerful clear voice that I could follow right along with her and mimic every emotion she presented.
I love how she tied together different ideas into one meaning of hope and overcoming the impossible when she talked of Hiroshima and her own goals. Her poems are very personal and have a life of their own and by reading them we would not be able to decipher other meanings that she had written of. If I had read these poems I probably would have been a little confused in how the things mentioned tied together and yet when I watched her I knew exactly what she was trying to get across. Her words were never excessively loud or hysteric but she indicated points of reflection, humor, and serious concerns just by tone. This was an awesome presentation and I am so glad it was brought to my attention!
I agree with Claudia that when people try to fit genuine thoughts into a rhyming parameter it tampers with the very nature of the idea/thought. What made Sarah Kay's performance so amazing was the genuine nature and her expression of exactly how she felt. While she lacked rhyming I did notice that she almost had a beat to her spoken poetry and it was powerful. This beat created by how fast or slow she talked and the pitch of her voice made the poem flow even better in my opinion.
p.p.s I just saw a clip called "brother" by her that is amazing its short and sweet and there's even a bit of rhyming. Check it out!
I've got to say that well for one, the link wouldn't work on my computer, but that i eventually found it, and 2, that I really liked this poem :) I thought it had some great lines in it, and I really liked the way that she used words and used language to create such a vivid poem. Her gestures and facial movements were also captivating, but I have to say that personally, I think I would have preferred to read the poem that tohave it read to me. To me, reading a poem is like watching a sunset in a way; you really have to be able to sit down and look at all of the pieces of it, and to sit and actually watch the sun set in order to take it all in. For example, as much as I liked watching sarah kay perform "B", it was like glancing at a sunset for 2 or 3 seconds, where as if I was able to sit down and read the poem, and look at the language and how its used, and interpret it for myself, then I would've been able to see the whole sunset. I just kind of felt like when poetry is read to me, that it's rushed, and I can't read the poem at my own pace, and if theres a line that I like, or one that makes me think, I can sit there and read it over and over again until I feel like I've gotten all that I can out of it.
I love stuff like this. Awesome.
I've always thought that poetry is a sort of bridge between human's instincts for music, and our instincts for language. Sometimes, poetry is more about the words, but sometimes the words aren't as important as the musicality. This makes me think of e.e. cummings in his poem "My Father Moved Through Dooms of Love," where the first stanzas read:
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height
I love poetry where the meaning is all wrapped up in the sound of the words bouncing off each other. This is also a case where I think the rhyming adds to the beauty and motion of the poem.
Last semester I was in an honors class titled "The Orality of Poetry". We spent our time either working on our own spoken word interpretations of poetry or listening to and analyzing the interpretations of others. In that class I realized that spoken word poetry is almost an art of its own. Some people have the skill to present poetry orally, others have the skill to write poetry, and still others can do both. I think that Sarah Kay is one of those individuals who does an excellent job both writing and orally interpreting her work. I agree with many of you who have mentioned that her "stage presence/acting/gestures/etc" lends much to the emotional response of the observers. Although her poems the words of her poems are moving, I think that her "stage presence/etc." enhances the appreciation and understanding of her poems.
I love it. Most of the time when I have heard spoken word, it is more poetic and less realistic. When Sarah performs, it is like she is speaking to the audience instead of creating word art. It is completely understandable and relatable. The mother poem was amazing and it was very comforting. She is very honest in the fact that she doesn't know anything. I love how she says that poetry and acting had a baby and it was spoken word poetry.
This the first time that I have ever come across spoken word poetry. After watching the entire segment, I felt inspired. Sarah Kay is very powerful speaker and her poetry is beautiful. I really don’t think that it would have impacted me as much if I had read her “B” and “Hiroshima” poems. I definitely wouldn’t have read it with the flow that she spoke with. I think that’s the HUGE difference with spoken and written poetry. Sarah Kay flowed and added emotion to different words, emphasized phrases and gestured as she spoke. With written poetry, all the reader can hope for is that they can make a connection with the words. There is no real emphasis on any particular word, so it’s how the reader sees it. There is no real flow, just how the reader pieces it inside of his mind. Written poetry is really up to the reader whereas spoken word poetry is up to the writer. He or she delivers it exactly how they want it to be delivered and portrayed.
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