Reflection: Anthologies, my love letter to the art of spoken word and reviving poetry as a contemporary art form

In this article I am going to discuss my ongoing commitments to the serial short-film project which I produce in collaboration within Kitchen Sink Productions known as Anthologies, and discuss how I perceive its place within the current artistic cannon. I will seek to set it against the different styles of poetry and spoken word performance which exist within contemporary performance spaces and explain why I chose to begin the project as an homage to poetry as a fundamentally performative medium in retaliation to what I view as having been the death of poetry as a popular art, propelled by the analytical approach thrust upon us by the education system.

Firstly, for those who do not know (and by no means particularly should you), the Anthologies project is a collection of poetry written by myself (mostly) and performed by various artists to a camera set within an idyllic location, responsive to the atmosphere of the poem, and is performed directly to the camera as if addressing the viewer who is intended to be situated within the location too. This aesthetic and style of delivery is by no means revolutionary, or unique to the work which Anthologies has produced, nor do I claim it to be so. The whole idea came to me, the format included, from the work of Allie Esiri, Paul Weiland and their Poem for Every Day of the Year collection, where famous actors such as Helena Bonham Carter and Tobias Menzies perform canonical poetry from the likes of William Wordsworth, Sylvia Plath, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Carlos Williams and Derek Walcott. The style and genre of the poetry in Esiri’s collection is dynamic, incorporating the great romantic poets and their assorted works which still hold the nations eye many years after their death, as well as the work of modernist writers whose poems are more obscure but still just as flavoursome to the right audience, and all through to more contemporary poets and academically acclaimed writers like Seamus Heaney – whose work extensively features in the national curriculum.

The only aspect of the concept which I have departed from, intentionally, is of using other people’s words, not wanting to attempt the adopting or adapting of them to be something other than what they originally were, and although the first lesson of any undergraduate theatre degree is that of Roland Bathes and the concept of the death of the author, that text is the “oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes” (Bathes,1967), I did not wish to attempt to convert or decipher meaning from other writer’s text. Moreover, and perhaps rather stubbornly of me, I was also done with the other introductory exercises of undergraduate theatre degrees and their voice classes; performing classic poetry through some odd attempt to create your own context and meaning.

Instead, I wanted Anthologies to stand alone as a project written for itself and to be enabled to drive directly at the problem which I see with contemporary societies feelings around poetry – that poetry is a purely text exercise, a solely written device, devoid of all soul, breath or engagement, not something to be spoken and proclaimed, to be listened to and deeply felt within, but simply a form of literature to be intellectualized and analysed, discussed with different coloured pens in-hand as the assembled company endeavours to decipher several potential meanings for a bland and half engaged debate – butchered by the ever increasing need to have things which can be made to make sense and be understood.

The issue of this intellectualization begins from education. In schools’ poetry is on the syllabus but not in a meaningful or creative way – simply as a memory test for students. In GCSE English classes across England, students are forced to memorise over twenty poems, to have clear and described understandings of them which can be parroted off to an examiner as part of one section of one exam. There is no love for poetry, no life given to it, although not for a lack of individual teachers trying. My English teacher attempted to give all life and love to poetry, we would read it aloud as a class, we would watch people deliver these thoughts and feelings to camera in a similar vein to the work of Esiri and Weildman, but it was of no use because at the end of the day we still had to memorize them for the exam and all personal feeling or response to the poem was washed away underneath a list of pre-approved interpretations which the teacher deemed could or would be suitable to the examiner. This is the first step with which we encourage all children and young people to treat poetry with contempt and by result, curate a society which does not love the art of language.

Where, therefore, has language left to go? Where has it found refuge and love, respect amongst those who somehow manage to withstand the monotonous drum of the curriculum? It has gone to spoken word and the underground movement, the sweaty and heavy late nights in pub basements and quirky poetry slams as part of fringe events like in Edinburgh, Brighton or Chichester. Increasingly we see the growth of poetry slams and spoken word events, popping up as part of fringe festivals or open mic nights. Poetry has shifted therefore from something which is written for or about God, or the nation, no longer do we see works like Daffodils or Jerusalem but instead poets have shifted register to talking about their personal experiences, their lives, to rallying challenge to the injustices or issues which they perceive. Emerging from this, poets such as the late Benjamin Zephania have challenged the intellectualization of poetry, keeping their work rhythmic and engaging, talking about contemporary issues and reaching out to their audiences through their words. The whole movement of slam poetry and spoken word is founded on this idea, of keeping poetry relevant and de-intellectualizing it.

In their book Take the Mic: The Art of Performance Poetry, Slam, and the Spoken Word (A Poetry Speaks Experience), Smith and Kraynak clearly label the identity of slam poetry as “not just text on a page…not a formalized poetry reading in which the audience listens passively and applaud politely regardless of what they really feel or think…is not an art form that lets an elite few decide what’s of value and what’s not…not talent show or a gimmick…it’s an experience that’s artistic, entertaining, educational, spiritual, reflective, and above all life-changing” (Smith and Kraynak, 2009:7), they instruct an interpretation of poetry which breathes life, demands energy and engagement, implores the audience to reflect critically and develop a response which is truthful and engaging. We have seen this in the ever-increasing amount of open mic events and the hordes of videos on YouTube which see people writing their own poetry for public performance to rooms of like-minded artists and audiences who watch on with intent focus and adoration of the art form. There was even a brief moment when spoken word and poetry returned to popularity through social media and the use of the format by people such as BoyInABand (Don’t Stay in School) and Prince EA (Dear Future Generations: Sorry, and I Sued The School System). These artists used the format as an opportunity to directly provide challenge to contemporary socio-political issues like climate change and education reform, with their videos receiving millions of views and being platformed on social media forums across the globe. These performances, from multi-million viewer videos to the experimental writer at a late-night pub event, are all reaching for those values through the work they are making, providing life to the idea that poetry can be artistic, entertaining, educational and most of all contemporary and relevant.

In my view this should not just extend to slam poetry but all poetry as a principal of the fact that poetry is by its very nature a performance, it is an (inner)monologue in the way it forms – a collection of thoughts, ideas or words, belonging to someone and should be celebrated by being read aloud.

It was this instigation that led me to the idea for platforming my own poetry, which I had long kept locked away on my shelves, through a stylized retelling. I wanted to find a place between the rallying demands of Smith and Kraynak to be expressive and truthful and my desire to have an aesthetic, to belong to a holistic performance and, whilst not being elitist, be performed with refinement and artistry. This resulted in the first series of Anthologies, known affectionately as The Quiet Village, aptly named because much of the work had been developed during the first and second lockdowns when the world momentarily returned to a quietness which I had only ever heard about from my grandparents about how the world was when they were younger. In this first collection of poetry, I strived for aesthetic, perhaps dominantly so, to curate something quaint and handsome, something which felt Edwardian like the place around which it was eventually filmed.

The poems centred themes of love and adoration, of the quiet life of days gone by, and in them, although I strove to be truthful particularly in the poems Pastel Intonations, Coffee Grounds and Larks in which I depicted literal experiences and instances of my own life, I became guilty of crafting a sense of performativity, of forcing a narrative, through others such as Red Grapes or Tea Cakes, and the audience “listen[ed] passively and applaud[ed] politely” (Smith and Kraynak,2009:7) as a result – nothing felt challenging or engaged, just quiet and enjoyable performance. Therefore, although I created an experience that was “artistic, entertaining” (Smith and Kraynak,2009:7), it was not spiritual, reflective or life changing – it lacked potency and reality, it lacked the truth which I was trying to deliver.

Determined not to make the same mistake again, to be as “artistic, entertaining, educational, spiritual, reflect and above all life-changing” (Smith and Kraynak,2009:7) as possible, I shifted focus and decided to do away with any designed over-arching narrative, and instead curated the next series which I called Darker. Darker was about darkness, that was it, that was the only thing which I felt had to link the poems in order for them to be included in the collection. It could be literal darkness, emotional darkness, darkness of natural or supernatural causes, darkness of thought, darkness of anything – just darkness. In doing so I created a new collection of seven poems (only six where ever published due to editing and time constraints – although fear not, it will get released one day!). They felt dynamic, they varied in subject and style, in mood and aesthetic. There was artistry in the language and visual presentation, curated through careful consideration of the shot and developed by writing from lived experience across all of the work – from the remnants of a previous relationship, to how I feel about my Dad in the years after he died, through to an adoration of the moon and hope for the future. All these poems were invoking my lived experience and therefore, I suppose, were spiritual and reflective of those experiences. Moreover, despite the inability of any artist to be entertaining to everyone and knowing the limit of art to be “life changing”, I feel that the poems and their delivery was as aesthetically entertaining as possible, intriguing at the very least to the average viewer, something different. Finally, in addressing the call to be “life changing”,  I have never claimed that I could make something that would change a life, I don’t really believe that is possible, but I know that individual audience members at least found them to be touching and relatable.

The second series was more adept at incorporating the aspects of poetry and spoken word performance which Smith and Kraynak propose, it was sharper in subject matter and unimpeded by forced artistic preoccupations. It was allowed to just be the words, the performance and the audience, it directly tapped into lived experience to be created. The poems each existed with their own identity, their own subject matter and delivery style, each performer found their own relationship with the work, no backgrounding or character given, and they each crafted an appropriate relationship to the audience.

Overall, discoveries from the failure of the first collection and the successes of the second have shaped what Anthologies will go on to be, and that perhaps there is now a medium which keeps poetry contemporary but entertaining, accessible digitally and aesthetically pleasing against a curated backdrop. In Anthologies, I know that I am striving for artistry in conjunction with subject impact, that poetry can, in the modern day, attempt to be engaging through its manifestations in performance and that we can, if we choose, to move poetry away from the canonical texts droned out in classrooms for the sake of an exam. In Esiri and Wildman’s work we find a beauty of those canonical and more contemporary texts and that there is space for poetry to be performed in modern performance practice – although we must strive to make it happen, we have to actively create new work rather than just regurgitate the poems which everyone already knows.

References and Materials:

Kitchen Sink Productions (2023) Anthologies - Series 1. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtpiaMChxRb3F9W32eg323kuxZbFTuRxA

Kitchen Sink Productions (2023) DARKER - Anthologies Series 2. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtpiaMChxRb0iS7XwQo8BLBojt-jYksxm

Smith, M. and Kraynak, J. (2009) Take the Mic: The Art of Performance Poetry, Slam, and the Spoken Word (A Poetry Speaks Experience). Illinois: Sourcebooks Inc.

YouTube Poetry with Allie Esiri (2020) A Poem For Every Autumn Day: A Light in Dark Times. Starring Helena Bonham Carter & Tobias Menzies. Available at: https://youtu.be/tQhsSUhxurk?si=tbSW92cgDWileYXS (Accessed 10 January 2024)