‘Poetry Live!’ breaks open the present moment in its fourth year
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
Spoken word is the poetry form that invites itself to the party. With the bravado of theatre and the vulnerability of confessional writing, the genre demands you recognize its presence. And there was something undeniably electric about “Poetry Live!,” the annual spoken word event, which held its fourth iteration on Jan. 15 in Bing Concert Hall.
This was my first year attending “Poetry Live!,” and the evening felt motionlessly defined by its location and the political realities of this moment in time. As the audience cheered halfway through the night to beg for more poems, Sarah Kay, an award-winning performer and the headlining artist, jokingly chided “Silicon Valley” for being “greedy!”
This year’s “Poetry Live!” felt hyper-aware of itself, and I, by extension, became hyper-aware of myself. I breathed deep and let the blue and violet lights wash over me. The room was dim and the seating tight on tiny chairs. I watched a gaggle of older ladies in front of me, their silver hair tinted pink by the colored overhead lights.
Sam Sax, event introducer and ITALIC lecturer, opened the evening with a viscerally meta poem about the act of poetry. This was our “amuse bouche,” mouth amuser, Sax teased. His verse thundered through the room in a hymnic fashion: “This is a sacred business / our most natural obligation.”
“I now pronounce us unpronounceable,” he declared, words rumbling in my ribs. Sax danced away, but not around, the social problems which were omnipresent and clung to the room, instead announcing we were “gathered here today to celebrate the unity of breath and recklessness.”
Stunning student performances from the Stanford Spoken Word Collective followed. Young artists pleaded to the audience as they explored the constraints of language, of poems which could not be understood by immigrant mothers or America, and explored universal themes of the personal and political. One young poet enraptured the audience in a narrative on childhood racism, detailing how a classmate put bagged dog poop in her backpack. Laced with humor and exhaustion, she characterized the object as “delicate” and remarked, “I hope you are just as creative and willing to use your hands.”
Stanford’s Spoken Word Collective unraveled everyday queer tragedy in the H-Mart parking lot, the stunning link between spilt tomato sauce and a mother’s blood, the anatomy of a nation and the liberation movements of the Middle East. Student performances were raw and layered, often tiering personal experience with the systemic forces that drove them by reaching into the audience. One student mourned past mistakes: “I have never loved anything in all the ways I should have” and “Everything is about leaving.” With a mix of Arabic and English, another poet personified “a liberated breeze” which she prayed was “mighty enough to fight” military forces.
Hieu Minh Nguyen, a Jones lecturer and emcee-organizer of “Poetry Live!,” introduced Sarah Kay. The two have known each for “at least a decade,” and Minh Nguyen emphasized (repeatedly!) that Kay was from New York City. Oh, did I mention that Kay is from New York City? Because she is from New York City.
Kay’s presence was best described as that of a firework. Her poems reflected an appreciation for life marked by child-like wonder and the knowingness of a woman in her 30s. She writes nostalgic poems about the love between her childhood babysitter and her boyfriend; about orange-clad monks at the airport and her photographer mother’s love for the city; of former lovers who shouted, “This is not a metaphor!” to get her to release and finally jump off a seaside cliff. Beyond New York City, her poems transported audience members to a specificity of location in space and time, nestling them in the intimacy of relationship and the recognition of life’s joy.
In their relatability, Kay’s poems can straddle the line between poetry and stand-up, building a mounting emotional resonance through moments of humor.
“I like my men like I like my coffee: more in theory,” Kay joked with a wink. She bemoaned the world of modern dating apps and how platforms limit you in describing your interests. Some only have pre-written options for you to choose, which she reported as bad news for poets, whose interests include “when the streetlamps turn on at night” or when the season’s leaves change.
Kay waxed poetic about a car-jacker who stole her dildo but left boxes of her poetry books in the rain. She turns this dildo-talk into an exploration of power and female sexuality. The audience laughed but then was wrecked in one fell swoop, as she reminded us that “You can lower your lips to kiss an ocean but the best you leave with is salt” and “A haunting is a rejection of ending,” asking “What if I’m addicted to making it complicated?”
With a cadence of awe and the craft of a poet, Kay connected her friend’s aversion to earthworms to how the harmless can be weaponized, how “innocent was a label created to define the guilty.” Her fascination with the world was contagious. Her optimism for the world was even more so. She reminded the audience that the world is beautiful, that there are a million moments worthy of gathering: from a starfish stranded on the street, to a city skyline sunset, to a friend you lend your sweatshirt to in an attempt to love them forever.
“Poetry Live!”was a night that reflected the resilience of artistry in unprecedented times. Through rhythm and verse, the evening’s performances encapsulated the chaos of the present moment but still encouraged a bleeding hope.
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