Listen to the Poet

Writing, Performance, and Community in Youth Spoken Word Poetry

Wendy R. Williams

• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781613766453
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Youth spoken word poetry groups are on the rise in the United States, offering safe spaces for young people to write and perform. These diverse groups encourage members to share their lived experiences, decry injustices, and imagine a better future. At a time when students may find writing in school alienating and formulaic, composing in these poetry groups can be refreshingly relevant and exciting. Listen to the Poet investigates two Arizona spoken word poetry groups—a community group and a high school club—that are both part of the same youth organization. Exploring the writing lives and poetry of several members, Wendy R. Williams takes readers inside a writing workshop and poetry slam and reveals that schools have much to learn about writing, performance, community, and authorship from groups like these and from youth writers themselves.

CHAPTER 1

Guiding Research and Theory

I write basically every day.

—Stacey

Various studies and theoretical perspectives have shaped the research presented in Listen to the Poet. In the sections below, I highlight influential research in the areas of literacy in communities, extracurricular writing, youth literacies, and spoken word groups. I also address sociocultural theory and the concept of “communities of practice,” which are useful for shedding light on literacy learning in these two diverse youth poetry groups in Arizona.

Guiding Research

Literacy in Communities

Literacy research experienced an important shift when Shirley Brice Heath (1983) turned to communities to study literacy learning. Her ethnography, conducted from 1969 to 1978, examined three groups of families living in the Piedmont Carolinas: those from Trackton, an African American working-class community; Roadville, a white working-class community; and townspeople, African American and white professionals. Heath discovered that all three groups had different ways with words, resulting in varying levels of academic preparedness and advantage as their children entered school. She argues that if schools do not adapt to students’ cultures and ways with words, they will “continue to legitimate and reproduce communities of townspeople who control and limit the potential progress of other communities and who themselves remain untouched by other values and ways of life” (369). Heath’s ethnography continues to be relevant in literacy studies to this day, as additional research on class, race, family, and community emerges (Delpit, 2006; Lareau 2011; Yosso 2005).

Brian Street’s (1984) research in Iran in the 1970s also looked at literacy in communities. His work highlights the social dimension of literacy practices. In later research, Street (1995) looks at how unofficial literacies are “marginalized against the standard of schooled literacy” (128), and he calls for future research that locates “forms of resistance and alternative literacies alongside ‘schooled literacy’” (124). Resistance literacies are certainly at work within the Metropoets network.

Heath, Street, and others helped to usher in the “New Literacy Studies” movement of the 1980s. This movement brought with it the understanding that there are multiple ways to be literate, in some ways challenging the oral-versus-written debate (Collins and Blot 2003; Gee 2012). This work paved the way for later studies of literacy in homes and communities.

Extracurricular Writing

The writing that young people engage in outside of the formal curriculum goes by many names such as extracurricular writing, out-of-school writing, unsanctioned writing, voluntary writing, and self-sponsored writing (Abbott 2000; Hudson 1986 and 1988). On their own time, writers choose their topics, practices, and communities rather than have teachers decide these things for them. Judy Abbott (2000) found that “self-sponsored writing at home featured a wider range of audience, purpose, and genre than both assigned and self-sponsored writing at school” (56). She also discovered that some of the work described as self-sponsored actually originated in school as work assigned by teachers, something I found as well with a young rapper who wrote a song about the Holocaust after reading the book Night in his high school English class. His school experience influenced his voluntary writing (Williams 2013). In other words, dividing writing into “school” or “out-of-school” is not as clear-cut as it may appear because writers move across different spaces and take ideas and techniques with them (Gutierrez 2008).

In her discussion of extracurricular writing, Anne Ruggles Gere (1994) explains that people have gathered “in living rooms, nursing homes, community centers, churches, shelters for the homeless, around kitchen tables, and in rented rooms to write down their worlds. These writers bear testimony to the fact that writing development occurs outside formal education” (76). People write and learn in a variety of contexts besides schools. Conducting research in these nonschool spaces can yield important findings about learning, literacy, and community that may also have relevance for schools.

There seem to be some key differences between school-sponsored and self-sponsored writing. Janet Emig (1971) found that her participants’ out-of-school writing focused on the writer or on society. It tended to involve more prewriting, was usually shared with peers, and typically involved a strong moment of completion, pauses and reflections, and revisions. This stands in stark contrast to the writing participants composed for school, which typically accompanied literary study or responded to issues selected by the teacher, who was also the primary audience for the work (91–93).

Many scholars have commented on the gap between students’ interest in their voluntary writing and their lack of interest in writing for school (Mahiri and Sablo 1996; Weinstein 2009). Perhaps students view school assignments as mere exercises, favoring voluntary writing instead, which may be based on their lives or offer “a partial refuge from the harsh realities of their everyday experiences” (Mahiri and Sablo 1996, 174). Voluntary writing often explores topics that schools will not go near (e.g., violence, drugs), and it appears to offer benefits regarding “identity construction,” “personal status,” and “personal satisfaction” (174).

Studying voluntary literacies can uncover stories of success from a broader range of students and in a broader range of settings. In their review of out-of-school literacies research of the 1980s and 1990s, Glynda Hull and Katherine Schultz (2001) noted that researchers have investigated voluntary writing for multiple purposes, including to “decouple the effects of literacy from the effects of schooling,” “account for school failure and out-of-school success,” and “push our notions of learning and development” (602–3). Going outside of school to study adolescent writing removes a complex array of factors associated with the classroom context (e.g., school rules, a fixed schedule, mandated attendance, homework, classwork, tests, standardized curriculum, etc.).

When out-of-school youth literacies combine with academic learning, a “third space” can result (Bhabha 1994; Gutierrez 2008; Moje et al. 2004; Soja 1996). That is, unofficial (home/community) and official (school) spheres overlap in a hybrid space, creating new opportunities for participation and learning. Palo Brea Poets Club and the Metropoets group both operate in third spaces in which teaching artists make poetry accessible to adolescents. Many studies have examined this type of bridging between school and out-of-school literacies (Alvermann and Hinchman 2011; Gutierrez 2008; Hull and Schultz 2001 and 2002; Sweeny 2010). It is worth mentioning that such bridging does not mean teachers should lead kids into academic learning with their out-of-school interests only to discard that piece once the academic material is introduced. Rather, students’ out-of-school literacies themselves are worthy of exploration—and therefore, critique—in the classroom (Kirkland 2008).

Glynda Hull and Katherine Schultz (2002) have called for research that explores partnerships between schools and communities, and they have pointed out that if divisions must exist between schools and communities, more work is needed to understand how these divisions should work. The studies in this book, which examine both an out-of-school group and an after-school club, demonstrate useful points of convergence and divergence between schools and communities (see chapter 7).

When young people engage in unsanctioned writing, they do so by choice, rather than for an academic reward or out of fear of punishment for noncompliance. A student may struggle to produce a paragraph on a set topic in school only to stay up late that evening, captivated by the art of writing fan fiction, a rap, or a blog. The more teachers know about the writing young people are drawn to during their free time, the better they can shape curriculum to engage all writers in the classroom.

Youth Literacies

In their lives outside of school, adolescents are engaging in a wide range of writing practices for multiple purposes and audiences. Some of these forms of writing include drama (Winn 2011), autobiography (Wissman and Vasudevan 2012), graffiti (Chang 2005; Cintron 1997), texting (Paris 2010), fan fiction (Trainor 2008), blogs (Blinka and Smahel 2009), and new technologies (Kafai and Peppler 2011; Knobel and Lankshear 2007; Lankshear and Knobel 2011). Some adolescents write a great deal in their lives outside of school, yet adults do not always recognize the forms of writing as legitimate (e.g., texting, social media).

Young people are writing about topics that are important to them in their own words, sometimes even moving between different languages. Many scholars (Alim 2007; Harris 2006; Kinloch 2005a; Morrell 2005; Paris 2009) have stressed the importance of honoring and cultivating linguistic diversity in student writing. In one study, Korina Jocson (2006b) found that a poet sometimes used African American Vernacular English and “incorporate[d] a Chilean way of talking in his poems” (142). Unfortunately, students may feel that they are not free to express themselves or to play with language in school settings. Valerie Kinloch (2005b) recalls students’ shock at her “invitation to expressive freedom—freedom to manipulate the ‘standard’ or ‘proper’ or ‘linear’ way to write by playing with style, arrangement, and language forms, particularly home languages, or the ‘Mother Tongue’” (102). Furthermore, Marcelle Haddix and Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz (2012) have called for more student freedom and teacher imagination in classrooms, and Haddix recommends that teachers allow students to select “the topics, the genres, and the mediums and tools they use when composing in school” (190). These viewpoints honor students’ perspectives, experiences, and words.

When Jabari Mahiri (2008) examined video essays, raps, screenplays, and poems in which youth writers described their experiences, he found that these “street scripts” enabled adolescents to think about their experiences and engage in social critique. His participants attempted to gain greater control of their lives by “actively conceiving and critiquing the nature of their experiences by naming and explicating the paradoxes that clouded their lives” (38). Writing street scripts can be transformative. Pedro Noguera (2008) adds, “these scripts reveal how young people attempt to challenge the larger societal script which positions them as ‘at-risk,’ troubled and dangerous” (43). Noguera explains that street scripts can be critical, reflective, and hopeful.

Similar to street scripts are “youth space identity texts,” which Django Paris (2012) defines as “texts inscribing ethnic, linguistic, local, transnational, and political affiliations on clothing, binders, backpacks, signs, public spaces (e.g., walls and benches), youth authored rap lyrics, and electronic media (e.g., cell phones, Facebook)” (1). Paris suggests that literacy instruction should include the reading and writing of such texts.

When studying youth literacies it is worth acknowledging the importance hip-hop culture has for many adolescents. Adam Bradley (2009) writes, “Hip hop emerged out of urban poverty to become one of the most vital cultural forces of the past century” (xiii). It grew out of the South Bronx “in defiance of inferior educational opportunities and poor housing standards” (xiv). Hip-hop includes elements like dance, graffiti, rap, beat making, freestyle, and rhyme. For some Metropoets members, the poetry slam is a natural extension of the hip-hop culture they are already part of. For example, Metropoets teaching artists use mentor texts by rappers, play familiar songs at poetry slams, and encourage dancing.

Teachers and researchers have begun to explore possible connections be- tween hip-hop and literacy education (Alim 2007; Beach et al. 2016; Morrell and Duncan-Andrade 2002; Sitomer and Cirelli 2004). However, Jung Kim (2011) cautions against “programs [that] package hip-hop in overly simplified ways” and instead recommends using hip-hop to explore “a culture or movement” and to restructure approaches to teaching (173).

Ernest Morrell and Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade (2002) have designed a hip-hop unit for adolescent students that involves poetry study, side-by-side analysis of hip-hop and canonical texts, and the critical reading of a song. David Kirkland (2008) asks, “Why aren’t we using hip-hop anyway to help students make sense of the world and make meaning of their lived situations?” (74). He recommends that teachers “incorporate the artifacts of student life (e.g., rap, body art, graffiti, and so on) into classrooms to not only help advance students’ academic literacy development but to ultimately adjust how literacy is conceived of, practiced, and assessed” (73). Kirkland makes a strong case for attending to youth literacies in the classroom.

Spoken Word Groups

Spoken word research has found that this medium can offer poets an array of benefits. For example, young writers may come to identify more with writing and literacy as they share their spoken word poetry (Fisher 2007b; Jocson 2008; Weinstein 2010). Some poets conduct research for their pieces, and their commitment to writing may transfer into other settings as poets reach for a thesaurus or carefully revise work for their classes (Jocson 2006a and 2008). As one youth poet attested, “The opportunity of performing was a great help in strengthening my writing” (Weiss and Herndon 2001, 23). Youth spoken word groups can even motivate students to stay in high school and encourage them to move into higher education (Fisher 2007b). These are exciting findings.

In addition, poets may experience a range of personal benefits through spoken word, such as overcoming shyness and gaining self-confidence, and many youth find that spoken word can be therapeutic as well (Weinstein 2010). These works tend to be hopeful even as they address bleak situations (Sutton 2008), and poets seem to develop empathy as they share their stories with each other. James Kass (2007) writes, “I never imagined a girl would read a poem in class about how painful it was for her to choose to have an abortion and that, the next day, when she showed up for class she’d find a bouquet of flowers on her desk paid for by her classmates” (Eleveld 2007, 198). Sharing stories can strengthen community in a group.

Spoken word groups typically bring people of different ages together. Group leaders might be classroom teachers, college interns, or professional poets (Fisher 2007b; Jocson 2008). Open mics and poetry slams can also attract audience members with different backgrounds and experiences. Maisha Fisher (2005) writes that spoken word groups allow for “the inclusion of intergenerational perspectives” (128) and may connect younger members to history, culture, and music (Fisher 2003). Older poets may serve as “literacy activists and advocates,” “practitioners of the craft,” and “historians of the word” (Fisher 2007a, 157–58). In these spaces, people of different ages are seen as having much to offer each other.

Spoken word has been found to appeal to many young people who did not enjoy writing in school. Soraya Sablo Sutton’s (2008) participants expressed that poetry in school was “alienating and uninspiring because it had little to do with their daily lives” (223). In contrast, spoken word gave them a chance to perform poetry about real issues in front of a real audience. A participant in Maisha Fisher’s (2007b) study expressed, “Poetry is about us. In English class the reading and curriculum is about them. The school’s work. I don’t like that at all” (93). Many young people identify with spoken word at a time when high-stakes test preparation is draining and uninspiring.

Despite these benefits, Javon Johnson (2010) argues that scholars need to notice the problems in these poetry groups as well. For example, more work is needed to uncover the homophobia and sexism in slam communities. He reminds scholars to attend to the “racial, gender, class, and sexual dynamics between and among various performers, whereby the notion of community is always a contested concept” (397). Members of a group may very well experience the same community differently, and not everyone will feel welcome. Johnson (2010) adds, “With all the progressive politics many slam and spoken word poets live by, it is somewhat astonishing how frequently queer folks are pushed to the margins” (415). While the issues he brings up may be more prevalent among adult communities of poets, Johnson nonetheless offers a caution that researchers should take seriously as they study young people as well.

Youth poetry groups are certainly not without their challenges. Susan Weinstein and Anna West (2012) have pointed to some of the difficulties adolescent spoken word poets may face in these groups. In particular, poets may be unfairly associated with the poems they write, some poets in a group may be given a higher status, and even the popularity of spoken word poetry in the media can be a negative force. It is necessary to see both the benefits and challenges of these groups for a more complete picture.

Guiding Theory

Sociocultural Theory

Sociocultural theory, which can be used to highlight the social nature of literacy learning (Goncu and Gauvain 2012; Prior 2006), has influenced both of my studies of youth spoken word poetry groups. Applying this lens to studies of youth poets can illuminate the ways that writing happens with others. Specifically, young writers may teach each other techniques, share tools, write works together, adjust their writing based on audience feedback, and write in response to others. Even an author working independently uses preexisting building blocks, including a socially constructed language (Bakhtin 1986; Volosinov 1973), to create something “new.” A sociocultural perspective can reveal how socially mediated tools and processes support writers.

A sociocultural perspective can also highlight the communication at work in spoken word spaces. Multiple conversations are in play as poets and poems respond to each other, popular culture, and the social conditions in which poets live. After all, “language is a continuous generative process implemented in the social-verbal interaction of speakers” (Volosinov 1973, 98). M. M. Bakhtin (1986) used the metaphor of communication as links in a chain and argued that utterances occur within larger conversations: “Utterances are not indifferent to one another, and are not self-sufficient...