A Blog Post by Larayb Abrar
I recently went to a semi-final poetry slam at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe that featured a line-up of three very talented poets. As their performances brought their word-play, rhymes and rhythms to life, I thought about the effects of saying a poem out loud, as opposed to directly reading it on the page. As a spoken word performer myself, I wonder: what does it actually mean to take the words off a page and manifest them in front of so many onlookers? What changes?
What comes to mind first is Aristotle’s rhetoric triangle that puts the text/context, audience, and writer in relation with one another. Traditionally, while the writer provides credibility to the text, they are often removed or at a distance from the audience’s engagement with a text. Moreover, while the writer’s influence may affect the audience, the audience cannot do much to influence the writer. Similarly, in the conventional understanding of the triangle, the text is a stand-still, frozen object. To perform a poem modifies this triangle, giving it a more circular nature.
As a poet gets on stage and not only recites their poem but acts it out, coupling it with hand gestures, voice inflections and changing rhythms, the writer and the text become almost inseparable. Simultaneously, audience members react to each line coming from the poet’s mouth by snapping their fingers, laughing, cheering or nodding along. This energy goes right back to the poet, affecting their delivery of the poem and even sometimes the content of the poem (text) itself. This morphing of the rhetoric triangle into a feedback loop isn’t only more engaging, but as 20th century philosopher J. L. Austin would put it, it can also act as a gateway to seeing spoken word performances as “speech-acts”.
In describing language as a speech-act, Austin asserts that speech doesn’t only describe things in evaluative (true/false) terms, but that the utterance itself can create truth: it can make things happen. It stirs feelings, emotions, and reactions, much like a poem does. When the poet is on stage, even if they’re revealing something personal, they’re still creating a persona: they’re performing a role. Spoken word poetry is then similar to the way that the theatrical stage has potential to create a contested or imagined space, push social boundaries, and expose an audience to that performed reality.
To give a more concrete example of performativity allowing for social boundaries to stretch, in the 1960s a series of performative interventions took place right on the street. These performances were referred to as “happenings,” which is exactly what they were. The actors involved with these “happenings” performed out-of-context, often absurd material lacking any kind of plot, such as walking with boxes on their feet or emptying a suspended bucket of milk over their head. The point of these performances was indeed to push the social boundaries of what was considered acceptable. Doing it on the street, right in the public eye, allowed for these absurdities to be a part of everyday life.
In Blythe Baird’s 2016 spoken word poem “Pocket-Sized Feminism” performed on Button Poetry, she confesses, “Once, a man behind me on an escalator / shoved his hand up my skirt / from behind, and no one around me / said anything. / So I didn’t say anything, / because I didn’t want to make a scene.” Hearing Baird say this as opposed to reading it on a page suddenly makes it real. Not only do we get to witness her pain, but through her performance she is able to retroactively correct her error of not speaking out before. The performativity here normalizes this discussion of violation and, in real time, gives Baird the space to speak out that she previously did not have.
The interaction between poet and audience not only normalizes the speech, but also incites other actions, whether they be as small as a laugh or as drawn out as a blog post. So whether a poet is slamming about the current political landscape, illness, or even their beloved, it takes all of the emotion and perspective and truly puts the content out there. Performing gives the poet a direct, intense connection to the audience and an opportunity to create reality as they speak.
Larayb Abrar is a junior at NYU Abu Dhabi majoring in literature and creative writing. She contributes often to her independent college newspaper, The Gazelle. Her academic interests lie in post-colonial and gender studies. She has performed spoken word poetry at several venues in Abu Dhabi and occasionally dabbles in stand-up comedy.