[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_44

Zong!, Marlene Nourbese Philip, 2008

I believe that what makes Spoken Word popular in most civil rights movements is the fact that it is much more effective than a speech and much more accessible than a typical poem.

The Spoken Word is a fascinating way to think about disclosure in a mainstream context where people's attention span is short and visual and auditory stimuli are favored. Also because the voice that speaks is not the voice of “pure rationality” that comes from the “mind,” the one we are used to hearing on television every time someone gives a speech; the voice that speaks is the voice of emotion and feeling, which comes from the guts and the bowels.

Spoken Word is a powerful tool for transforming one's ghosts into something that goes beyond everyone’s individual sorrows; it can speak to everyone's suffering surprisingly simply by repeating a few words.

It's challenging to watch performances like Rafeef Zidah's "If My Words" or "Shades of Anger" without being moved—at least, I can't. I discovered the writer Marlene Nourbese Philip through some Spoken Word clips on YouTube in which she recited her poems. I was enchanted by her collection Zong!, in which she translates the 1781 massacre of the slave ship Zong into a few free verses.

When I bought the collection, what struck me was how the words were written: they were floating verseswithout lines or dots. It was not a matter of reading but of composing them, word by word, until arriving at a meaning. It was like starting with your hands full of pearls and clutching a necklace.

You feel that sentences are not needed where there is suffering and violence. All that is needed is a voice and a lot of space around it.