To those who
like to say that poetry is dead, Elizabeth Acevedo has a ready answer: poetry
is by no means dead, it’s just constantly taking on new forms. And slam is one of these
transmutations, where poets recite their work on stage, engaging directly with the audience.
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| Elizabeth Acevedo |
“I see
hundreds of young people at slam performances,” says Acevedo, a prize-winning writer
and performer based in Washington, D.C. “But some people would like to dismiss this
as just yelling. That makes me want to rebel.”
Acevedo was a
member of the Beltway team that won the 2014 National Poetry Slam
in the United States, by delivering impassioned, uncompromising verse. Since
then she has been touring colleges, conducting workshops and giving lectures.
Currently on
the road in Europe, she performed in Paris, Sevilla and Brussels in January, drawing
attention to the ways in which slam has raised the concerns of women and ethnic
minorities through poetry – and, along the way, ruffled establishment feathers.
“If you think
of how marginalized people are criticized for being marginal, maybe the work
that we’re doing is to get people to understand others’ experiences, to walk in
others’ shoes,” Acevedo says. “Art can make people more empathetic.”
During a
workshop in Paris, for instance, she recited a haunting poem about police
shootings of African-American men, using imagery drawn from her own heritage as
an “Afro-Latina”, as she calls herself, and mixing Spanish terms with the
English.
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| Acevedo in performance. |
Born in New
York City of parents from the Dominican Republic, Acevedo (who turns 28 in February) says she grew up with a love of music and storytelling at home. She initially
wanted to be a rap star but got into slam at age 14 because of a teacher who
encouraged her to perform her poetry with other schoolmates.
“When I saw how
seriously the students took the slam competition, it pushed me to see how I
could stand out,” she told SWAN in an interview. But after a few years of contests,
she withdrew to concentrate on her studies.
She was
working on a master’s degree in creative writing at the University of Maryland when
she and a team went to the National Poetry Slam, an annual contest that had 72
competing groups in 2014. Acevedo performed an individual poem in each round
and was one of about seven women among the final four teams of 16 to 20 contestants.
The team’s
win made her realize this could be a career, and over the past year, she has
visited some 50 colleges as a performer.
“I’m lucky to
be able to make a living from these shows,” she says, adding that she’s sometimes
surprised by the chord that her political work strikes. Still, she remains
irked by the dismissal, especially among some academics, of slam as a paltry
substitute for real poetry.
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| Acevedo at a Paris bookshop. (Photo: McKenzie) |
Some critics
say that the sport-like competitiveness of slam events and the raw political
nature of most recitations serve to diminish the art of poetry.
“I don’t
think that the fact that it’s different makes it any less powerful,” Acevedo
told SWAN. “I’ve seen people cry over a poem at some performances.”
She considers
herself part of a growing tradition. It’s almost 26 years since the first
National Poetry Slam took place in San Francisco in 1990, following the launch
of the genre in 1984 by American poet Marc Smith.
The movement
grew in Chicago and later spread to New York, with shows at the Nuyorican
Poet's Café, hosted by poet and activist Bob Holman who championed poetry in
various forms, particularly spoken word.
Slam’s
popularity spread to other countries such as France and England, where many young
poets have seized on the art form. In Paris, Acevedo was a guest of Paris Lit
Up (PLU), a project that brings writers together and organizes multimedia
literary events.
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| Jason Francis McGimsey, of PLU. |
“From the beginning,
Paris Lit Up has aimed to create open community spaces where writers can meet,
share their work and inspire one another,” says PLU’s executive director, Jason
Francis McGimsey. “We try to stress the social nature of writing and the
importance of writing communities.”
For artists
like Acevedo, one of the attractions of such projects is being able to speak
directly to an audience as a writer and to bring poetry to people who might not
necessarily read it, or who might have got turned off by the way it was taught
in school.
Acevedo is
also aware, however, that what sounds good on stage might not bear up under closer
scrutiny or work as well on the page.
“How do you
walk the line between a poem that’s equally as powerful when it’s performed as
when it’s written down?” she muses. “That’s something I’ve been grappling with.”
A chapbook of
her work will be published later this year and she’s working on other
projects. But she thinks there’s no turning back from slam, despite
disparagement of its artistic validity in some quarters.
“It feels
sometimes as if we’re bulldozing our way,” she says. “But I’m also just trying
to tell the stories I wish I’d been able to read.” - A.M.
You can follow SWAN on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale
You can follow SWAN on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale
