Writing For Performance Day 1

Introduction: Writing for Performance

“Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” — Plato
“A poem begins with a lump in the throat.” – Frost
“There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.” – John Cage
“Poetry is a weapon” – Baraka
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” –Shelly

This workshop will be divided into three sections: poetry, drama and prose. In this class we will read, write and perform. The goal: To get you to find something that you can use to advocate your ideas. This is a performance track, but in order to perform something you must first have a script, even if it is improv. Our goal is either for you to find someone else’s work, write your own work, or combine someone else’s work with your own. Eliot once stated that the best poets STEAL. And it’s a post-modernist idea, “the ocean of consciousness”, that art can use already existing art to create something new. Meaning: I encourage you to steal! We’ll call it sampling or alluding.
In this track you will develop two small projects and one final project. Our job as instructors is to teach you the skills in order for you to put the pieces together. In the creative writing track, it is our job to find the script.

DAY 1: Why use poetry to advocate? What makes a good poem? Performance Poetry.

Learning Objectives:
1)To list three items that make a good poem
2)To answer why use poetry to advocate.
3)To understand how to analysis a poem.
4)To write parodies with a slant on the environment.
5)To write down “Their Story” and keep a journal.
6)To value the impact of imagery in a poem.
7)To think about the connection between poetry and performance.

Why use poetry to advocate?
Think about what is more immediate: a good speech or a good poem? A well written essay or a song? Woody Gruthie used to walk around with a sign on his guitar that stated: “This machine kills fascists”. A good poem or song usually makes someone react – even before they understand it on a conscious level (this isn’t to say that they didn’t understand it subconsciously).

When we talk protest:
Think of slogans. Think of songs. Think of Martin Luther King. Think of Muhammad Ali. Think of any religion – you’ll find poetry.

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words” – Robert Frost.

“Poetry should strike the reader as wording of the highest order and appear almost as a remembrance.” – John Keats

“Always be a poet, even in prose.” — Charles Baudelaire

Poetry is concise and says more in a shorter space.

What makes a good poem?

a)imagery – 1st and above all things – you must have imagery.
Imagery – is the use of the five senses to create a description
We make sense of the world through our five senses, and therefore to create an experience for the listener or reader we need to allow them to experience it by evoking the five senses.
“The apparition of the faces in the crowd
Petals on a wet, black bough.” — Pound
Go here for more examples.

b)Story – always have a story. Even lyric poems have a story somewhere. All humans are storytellers. Share a story with your listeners.

c)KEEP IT SIMPLE. Don’t try to make something sound witty or sound like poetry. Make it honest and sound like you or the characters/persona in the poem. Difficult poets are often not good advocates.

d)Show don’t tell.

If you’re a rapper, instead of telling someone to let your freestyles come naturally, how can you show them with your words?
From the family tree of old school hip hop
Kick off your shoes and relax your socks
The rhymes will spread just like a pox
Cause the music is live like an electric shock
–Beastie Boys “Intergalactic” From Hello Nasty

e) When possible use figurative language

IMAGERY ASSIGNMENT:
Think about your name:
What image does your name give off? What does it smell like? What does it sound like? If you had to eat it what would it taste like? What does it look like?
Now take two images that contrast one another and put them together:
Example: Hydrogen Jukebox. Aspirin Nipple.

View performance poets: Amiri Baraka “Someone Blew Up America”;
Ron Whitehead, “I Will Not Bow Down America”;
“Taylor Mali, “
http://www.taylormali.com/


EXAMPLE OF A NAME POEM:

Named

Kent
Think of cigarettes
“Your father named you
after his favorite brand.”
My uncle chuckles
sipping Wild Turkey.
My father, a chronice smoker, smoked
nine packs during my mother’s labor.
The story: he stood staring
at a pack when the nurse brought
news: “Mr. Fielding- a boy.”
Think of cigarettes.
Think of my father, the white
lobby, his pacing, stick
after stick in his mouth
smoke curling from his lips
like surfer waves
in a rough ocean.
Think of cigarettes.
Think of me.
I became the smoke
that made my father cough
the smoke that blackened lungs
the smoke that filled
the long work hours
at a school he hated – inhale, inhale-
to buy bread, to buy shoes
we were poor, we needed
so many things: pencils, pants
doctor visits, dental work
electricity, heat, milk.
I am the smoke filled days
the orange flare as he inhaled.
My growth and deeds are the stubs
in the cemetery ashtray.
I got in fights at school
with kids older, gave one ten
stitches, threw rocks at cars
nicking and denting two or three.
I stole candy from stores,
peed on my 2nd grade teacher’s
Datsun, hid in the woods
to avoid the principal and a whipping.
Still my father came, reliable, stern
again and again, he came
to get me from the office
cigarette stuck in the corner
of his mouth, gray smoke
drifting into his graying hair.
Again and again, he inhaled
asked, “What were you thinking?”
I think of the cigarettes
in his hands – chalk sticks
to mist one’s name. Our lives
are the inhale of burning particles
Our lives are the release of gray truths.
When I die let it be with smoke & fire.
Let the consumption be brief.
Think of cigarettes.
Think of my father
working into the night
grading papers, shaking his head,
missing sleep, so that I could eat,
so that he could protect me,
so that I could grow and learn.
Think of the smoke in his lungs.
The smoke that ate his life