Everything is Poetry

Yesterday was madness, wonderful madness. Woke up at an ungodly hour, and hopped into a strangely colored PT Cruiser with none other than Ritallin (from Ottawa), stopped and picked up Oveous Maximus (from NYC) and we were... going to school. An absolutely beautiful high school that felt more like a fancy mall than a school, with benevolent administrators. Supposidley the school has a pretty bad reputation, full of "at risk" kids and whatnot. I hate that phrase: "at risk". At risk for what, exactly? By giving it a name, treating them differently, labeling the problem, couldn't it be a self-fulfilling prophecy? Or even worse, it's a known fact that when teachers are told that students are "exceptionally intellegent" they will (unknowingly) grade the students accordingly. Therefore, one could come to a similar conculsion regarding students labeled "at risk"- mainly that their behaviors will become interpreted to fulfill the label given to them....
Ritallin and Oveous were asked to perform/speak at this school as a part of a music class cirriculum. It surprised me a bit that a music teacher would ask poets to perform, and not an english teacher or a theater teacher. I always knew that spoken word was heavily influenced by hiphop, beats, and sound... of course. I just never really thought of it that way before, as a form of music. Poetry performed over beats is a marriage between the literary and the musical. Poetry performed with a beat you can feel but not necessarily hear- how could that be different? And it reminded me of something I always think about before I myself get on stage- how performance really is similar to singing. Paying attention to tone and timber of the voice are imperative to creating a pleasant and coherent performance- no one wants to hear someone screeching or mumbling for 3 minutes. And voice projection, as it is in theater, is also related to music. And the constant need to breath deeply in order to project with energy and resonance, not with the upper chest, but from low in the belly, like a singer.
At one point, the students were asked "Who likes poetry?" A few timid hands waved in the air in response. Then Ritallin explained how everything is poetry, how music is poetry because really it is poetry set to melody, how essays are poetry and even stereo instructions are poetry because somewhere, someone sat down and wrote out these words to get a message across, and that's all poetry really is.
I sat in the corner, almost feeling as a student, watching and recording the performance. At one point they even invited me up there (ahhh!) and I had the lovely opportunity to represent female poets (as a side note: every male poet I meet says that there are plenty of female poets, and that it's really not an issue. But from my experience in the field thus far, this is not the case. It is still definitely a male dominated field.) After talking to the music teacher and also the two poets, I came to understand the importance of such workshops. It gives the students something to relate to- to show them that poetry isn't an art for dead white men or stuffy academics with degrees in Post-Rennaisance Literature. That it certainly isn't all about Petrarchan sonnets but is most definitely influenced by them. That you need to know the rules before you can properly break them. And furthermore, you never know who you're going to inspire. Which is so completely true because it was because of a similar workshop more than 7 years ago that sparked my interest in spoken word. So really, I owe where I am now to that small collective of poets that inspired me so long ago. Strange how life works.
Later, after a loong ride home and a short nap, we gathered at the Savannah Room, where Ritallin was featuring. One thing I've noticed that I absolutely am starting to adore about spoken word is how it literally moves the speaker. How they get into this kind of super-focused trance that translates not only into sound, but into movement. The way the arms and hands and shifting weight in the legs and back dance along to both the theme and the rhythm of the piece. I know it sounds a bit strange, and if you've never seen a spoken word performance you probably think I'm nuts, but thank god I have my video camera with me, so I can show it when I get back.
I know I've said it before, but I truly feel so blessed to have met the people I've met so far. It's strange, perhaps it's due to the small poetry community, but it seems like everyone I meet either knows someone I know or knows someone I should know. And maybe it's the poet, or maybe it's canada but everyone has been incredibly friendly and helpful. It really makes you think twice about how we (perhaps we being americans) view the world as a generally cold and slightly hostile place, how we're taught not to trust others who we don't know well. Really, the kindness that people have shown me (people who are practically strangers) is unbelieveable. And it may seem silly, but it all falls into my theory of Road Karma- do good and good will be done. Pay it forward.