SPOKEN WORD : Straight From The Writer's Mouth
This is how it often starts: your first �open mic�: having visions of tripping over the scattered leads on the way to the stage, managing not to when the MC calls your name, giving you the courage to continue.
Clutching your notebook or the shaky A4 in your hand and trying to figure out if you should hold onto the microphone or not, what to do with your free hand if you don�t, how to stop the damn mic making all your �p�s go �phffpt!�, clearing your throat to start competing with the Daytona 500 machine in the corner, the espresso machine behind the bar and the noisy crew on the back table making animals out of their beer mats, to tell your story to the world, which is represented in this little bar, this little place in time� Well, this was how it started for me�
To risk being obvious, spoken word has been around a long time. Ever since humans turned our grunts into rhythms and our rhythms into sentences and locked down language as our prime form of communication we�ve been shouting and whispering stories at each other to enlighten, frighten, and entertain. We all carry around with us snippets of myths, jokes, proverbs, which have been passed from voice to voice over generations. In Western society we�ve fallen in love with methods of recording - we have books, newspapers, cds, and we�ve got libraries to store them in. But we�ve also got a thriving oral tradition, even though we mightn�t need to be so aware of it now. We�re naturally attuned to listen to stories and this is why spoken word and poetry performances always have an audience � an audience that might start out consisting of writers waiting their turn at the open mic, but without fail builds and grows � mainly by word of mouth.
Being a writer is a daunting career to embark on � not just because it's a solitary thing to do and it makes the pretty girls run away, but because we�ve all heard about piles of rejection letters, and we�ve all read books in school that were published only after the author was dead. Of course it�s not always this depressing, but the myth certainly is. Spoken word and poetry readings are an opportunity to explode the myth and create a more positive one; and an opportunity to give, and get, the words, straight from the writers mouth, in the moment, when they�re fresh and still malleable, not locked in ink, free for fusion with other forms like music, sounds, the play of lights on an earnest face, the ripple of laughter from an audience.
The term �spoken word� struggles to get across the richness, depth and style of the performed poem. The craft of it. The weaving of melody, rhythm and texture into the placement and replacement of words. Once the poet stands in front of the audience they become more than a writer � they become their words � they can�t be separated from the stories they tell. They become a particular kind of performer � and the possibilities of extending the word start opening up. Collaborating with musicians, video artists, sound artists, visual artists, dancers, hell, even with other poets, poets today are manipulating and stretching their words across every kind of canvas there is. There are, around the world, in all languages, new recordings, labels, radio shows, festivals, slams, gallery events, websites. It�s a genre now; it�s a card in the racks of record stores, an entry in about.com. It�s a $95 ticket to see Laurie Anderson (but should it be?), and it�s � still � a campfire yarn under the open sky, a thousand-year-old dreaming story.
There are times when a form of communication bobs up out of the ocean of stuff we�re always swimming in, and is noticed and discussed and hailed as a new form of art, even a �movement�. Now is one of those times, for the spoken word, and it�s a fine time to be in.
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