Why I Stopped Watching "Tips on Spoken Word" Videos

I am one of those poets who wanted to wing her performances without completing a standardized course on performance poetry. I was an avid follower of many spoken word poets I still fangirl over and granted, watching is not exactly learning but it seemed to work for me. I'm a sponge.

Recently, I was asked to be on a judges panel for a poetry slam in my city and the Type A monster in me was ready to devour any and all material that would help me give more insight to the participants - and devour all the material, I did.

While I came across some great, personalized advice and tips for a good performance, some of the things people said were outright absurd. Here are a few of those stroke-inducing "tips."

1. Everyone expects you to be amazing! 

Okay. Well. What about your own expectation of yourself? If it's your first time, no one in their right mind expects you to be amazing. I have met amazing writers who cannot for the life of them, will the courage to speak in public. Doesn't make them any less amazing, if you ask me. A mentor is supposed to know where you're starting from. Say, crippling fear of public speaking is 0. Telling that student to just, "be amazing!" isn't going to make them amazing! In fact, showing them first-timers wow everyone is probably going to make them feel worse.

Not to mention, spoken word poetry is supposed to take a break from the oh-so-high, inaccessible pedestal we keep page poetry on so let me just reiterate: I don't want you to be amazing - I want you to make a goal for yourself from where you are now, and work like hell to get there, if that's what you want. Being amazing is the most subjective, high-horse bullshit I have ever heard.

2. Be dramatic! But not that dramatic... oh god, STOP.

If you've just finished writing a poem that you think qualifies as spoken word, THAT IS FANTASTIC. You know what else is fantastic? The fact that you, yourself, know how well or how badly each line conveys exactly what you mean to say. And since you're the curator of this future masterpiece, start by underlining the lines that make your inner narcissist go, "MMM!"

Not every performance has to be an over-the-top stand-up where people have to laugh. You can make people laugh with the strangest things - especially sad ones - because nothing makes you laugh quite as much as things you can relate to. Dry humor makes people laugh even more.

Nothing will help you more than trying every line out for your own tongue. See which voice seems to get your point across best. DO NOT LISTEN to people who don't know what your poem is about - almost always, they don't know what you want it to say.


3. Don't let people know you forgot your poem.

Short of repeating myself but poetry is on its way to becoming an accessible, dethroned art form and people who refuse to accept that are the problem. If you forget your poem and have a tendency to make it worse by covering it up, take a deep breath, have a laugh and start over. It's okay.

Please don't be afraid to show people you're human. One of the soundest pieces of advice I have received is that the eye contact you make with your audience is the most human moment of your life because here you are, baring your soul to them, and fortunately, human souls aren't perfect. You're allowed to make mistakes and forget your train of thought. You can always make up for it with the conviction in the voice that delivers your poem.


4. If your poem is political, don't be too angry about it!

 
This one, by far, makes the least sense to me. While it's true that command over your emotions and expressions is crucial to a great political poem, if you want to show me that the political situation breaks your soul the hell down, by all means do it. If it appalls you, don't even pretty it up. The truth matters and everyone seems to forget that poetry is one of the best ways to exhibit the cold, hard truth. Sometimes, we can make it pretty, other times, we just can't.

Dry humor is still amazing, though.


5. Have fun with your poem.

I am guilty of standing by this one through thick and thin. While every video has said this, along with, "be natural," no one seems to show you how to do so. If you practise a poem long enough, it'll become a chore for you to be good at it. This will happen even if your poem is the best poem ever written and you are the best performer the world has ever seen.

You have to take breaks rehearsing your poem, and you don't want to recite it so many times you have a hard time getting your conviction back. It's the other way around; try to find something good about your poem every time you perform it, something that makes you stand taller every time you get up to say it out loud - maybe the way your eyes twinkle when you drift off, or that your cadence is flawless or maybe that every time you finish, it's something like this:

 

 At the end of your performance, your poem will make you feel a lot of things. If it felt good to pour your heart out, bless up. If it left your stomach feeling knotty, that's a side effect of telling the hard truth and that pain is a medal of honor - wear it proudly.

Basically: try to find the best version of your performance by yourself first. If you need help after that, there are a number of actual sources that help you do so. The internet is a beautiful, consuming thing - sometimes it just makes me mad.

Best of luck to the participants! Hope I could provide some annoying comic relief.  Register here if you haven't already. We'll be waiting for you to show us you. <3

Musings

I suck at starting things but I have no problem carrying things from Step 2-∞. 

Recently, I turned twenty, saying goodbye to all my excuses of being a slightly bratty, moody baby and it's been difficult because not only have I felt no different, I also went through multiple crises that left me feeling very, very confused.

Feelings. 

A few weekends ago, I traveled to Lahore for the Pakistan Poetry Slam '16, held at Books n Beans, which was thoroughly impulsive on my part to even register, let alone go through with it. Lahore itself, was magical. When I had always wanted to pursue my medical education in the city, life didn't work out that way but the longer I was there, the more I felt that I belonged nowhere else. 

The poem I had prepared was a few years old, mainly because medical school and its wide array of consecutive literal failures had destroyed any semblance of a muse apart from depression, called, "Nine Reminders to Love Myself." Backstory: the poem was written when a nut of a human being said I only write sad things. 

My best friend, while helping me choose, told me that Nine Reminders was the poem most sure of itself and I agreed. What I felt performing that poem on the day was incomparable. People describe their memories on stage as an out-of-body experience but for me, it was the exact opposite. It was the single most visceral experience I had ever had. Being a typical Piscean means I am always aloof one way or the other but when I was performing my poem, I was so grounded to the moment, speaking the living lesson Sarah Kay taught me about how poetry was "what I have so far, and this is where I go from here," so completely in the moment, feeling the finality of each second we so often ignore to get on with the future. I knew when I said, "the sun was green," it was over. No matter how many times I gave up on the chance of making an impact before this, how many times I had accepted defeat, I was never going to perform quite like that again.

Though my middle scores were all high nines, the competition got much tougher after that. I've always called myself a spoken word poet, rather than a slam one, because I can never imagine myself angry or passionate enough to think myself an activist or a slam poet. All I write about are the stories and moments that made me because that is my essence, my only word I am sure of and it shouldn't get more genuine than that. And it's scary to think, that you're almost twenty and these fourteen-year-old wonders have had more to be angry about than you could ever dream. You're almost twenty and all you can talk about is being four and thinking that above that woody arch over the boulevard, God is smiling down on you. It was humbling and terrifying to think that my stories were too small an event in all of time to talk about.

Sarah Kay performing at TEDWomen in San Francisco, CA.

In all of that, not once did I think that poetry doesn't mean the same thing for everyone, that all the times I've been told I remind people of Sarah Kay, not once did I sit down and think that she's the definition of a story-teller, going to country after country to show people how she was the coolest thing to happen to USA and Japan in one body. She may not have been all I've aspired to be but she comes pretty damned close. Our stories are what make us and my stories have made me. Mine may not be dripping with the need for gender equality or war-stories but my war-stories don't mean less for that to be.

"What is the difference between a master and a beginner?"

All my failures have made me, (not claiming to be a master!) but it's hard to remember that it takes a lot to put yourself out there and I was probably the most butthurt teenager when it came to taking criticism. Now, working on a chapbook with the two editors I trust the most, I know I've come a long way. It's not that poems mean lesser, I can probably filter help from true bullshit now.

Turning twenty wasn't a big deal because you don't age overnight. Growing is a relief. I wish I was better reminding myself of it but it's okay. Part of growing up is accepting that no one could have learned your lessons your way and even your stories have a way of helping you. As Zohab Khan, co-host of PPS16, wrote so beautifully:

"Clouds come,
Clouds go.
People come,
People go.
Change,
Change stays."

  

It was pretty wicked to be a runner-up at the Pakistan Poetry Slam '16, with the poem that was the beginning of the evolution of my writing style.

Runner up Orooj-e-Zafar with Zainab Z. Syed.

Shine away, humans, especially if your sweat is all that makes you glisten.

Peace.