The Beauty of Spoken Word Poetry
- Feb 28, 2021
- 2 min read
Before we get started, did anyone notice the internal rhyme in the title?
Anyway, I figured I'd write a little bit about how I've grown to appreciate spoken work poetry over the past week or so. I'm been listening to some poetry by a guy named Suli Breaks for the Mentor Poet assignment in English. Admittedly, I originally found out about Suli because I had just been scrolling through countless Top 10 Modern Day Poets lists and happened to come across him. I saw his entry on the list and figured why not: he's a modern day spoken work poet, so that makes finding recordings of poems very easy to find, and spoken word poetry is basically civilized rap (or so I thought at the time). He's also from the United Kingdom, and they have some nice accents over there.
As I listened, the first thought I had was, "Wow! I can distinguish what he's saying!" which was a lot more than I could say about modern day rap. My next thought was, "Wow! He's got some bars!" which then got me thinking about the overall message of his poems. I could tell that his most notable ones are grounded in the harsher truths of life. I noticed that he was very capable of delivering his message in a way that was emotionally impactful and relatable. He often made references to many common experiences that would trigger certain emotions. He would also be very intentional with how he delivered his words, making sure to capitalize on the emotional potential of his lyrics. Poetry that is specifically meant to be spoken allows authors to convey their own emotions and messages to the reader through both their words and their delivery, and allows us to understand the poem through their own point of view.
It's really quite elegant.
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