Spoken Turd

The poet shuffles onto the stage with a fake, forced reluctance. The girls are already swooning, understandably, as the statuesque new-age Shakespeare flips through his Moleskine notebook, searching for a piece. The crowd is excited.  They shout titles at him, animatedly making requests. His followers (groupies) seem to think he’ll resurrect what so far for me, has been a painful self-experiment at suffering fools. A time-wasting exercise. He clears his throat to draw our attention. The girls (aspirant ‘star’ fuckers?) gush into their organic hemp panties as he recites lines about “her hair in the moonlight” and “his finger tips slowly tracing his love down her spine”.  Someone shoot me please. No such luck in this crowd of dreadlocked, irie brothers and sisters. Peace-lovers they are. Perhaps they’d be more willing if they discovered that the whole time they were trying to impart neo-liberal, pan-africanist, conscious coolness on me; I was trying to figure out if the groin bulge on said poet was as deceptive as his demeanour. If under the branded layer of denim, his penis was as flaccid as words. I wonder, if after making them wet with his lyrical foreplay; he takes them to his studio in the cool part of Braamfontein (the part that’s safe for white people to go to) and prematurely ejaculates in their eyes. Yep, that’s what this entire night has felt like. An intellectual eye-squirt.

Hi, my name is Linda, and I’m a hypocrite. I attend poetry sessions and sit somewhere at the back, with a warm Hunters Dry, rolling my eyes and gagging at the pseudo-deepness; at the sugar and air candy floss lightness of their words. What the fuck is Spoken Word?

Poetry, once the impotent solace of the self-absorbed, sad and lonely; it has now made its way out of tattered, A5 notebooks and onto stages, TV and radio. Now, monotonous house tunes have replaced the monotonous drum beats that used to accompany the words. Popularised in the late 80’s with the materialisation of poetry slams; it secured its place in the “under-ground”, very mainstream world of pop-culture; although some argue that its foundations are deeply rooted in the Beat movement of the 60’s. Poetry as a performance. As a dramatic, verbal soliloquy; except unlike the Beats, who were predominantly white men of reckless affluence and excess, Spoken Word entrenched itself in the ghetto’s of Black America, gaining recognition and repute on shows like Def Poetry on HBO.

I don’t hate Spoken Word. I guess what I don’t like is the whole scenester vibe of it all. The predictability of the elaborately wrapped turbans. The burning incense trying to mask the heady smell of weed. The regurgitated ideas and counterfeit originality. The fact that poetry is no longer about the words; it’s about how long your dreadlocks are and how many Zambuck tins are attached to the hem of your ankle-length, recycled skirt. How “deep and real” you look. Whether or not you use the relevant, popular catch-phrases: Azania, African thighs parting, capitalist fucks versus communism. What happened to the words man?  We’ve regressed away from the inherent beauty and significance that words possess in their edification, in their inception. The innate ebb and flow of juxtaposition, the manipulation of syntax to manoeuvre and move. Gone is rhythmic relevance and lyrical liquidity. The words no longer shout, the poets do.

You’ll forgive me if I’m not doing cartwheels at the prospect of another vintage clothing sale/poetry read. The notion is about as authentic as the racks of new clothing, cut and dyed to look as if they were from 50’s. As legitimate as the Gil Scott Heron poem that the orator is trying to pass off as his own. As superficial as our new-found concern for the less-fortunate, only to soothe own guilt and romanticise their poverty. I’m bored of the disingenuous sentimentality, but mostly, I’m offended by the elementary standard of it all. The playground poetry being passed off as paradigm-shifting epiphanies. I’m not looking to learn something new; I just want to hear something good, because frankly, poetry doesn’t have to be elaborate to be emotive. Sometimes the poignancy lies in the bareness and simplicity of the writing, but if you’re not educating or entertaining, then what the hell are we here for? So, maybe I do hate Spoken Word.