Anyone who has seen the posters around town for Henry Rollins’ tour will understand. The ‘Spoken Word’ tattoo on the hardcore grunge poet’s arm sums it up: while poetry is at home in the library, spoken word takes it out to the pub.
Spoken word has the angst, passion, humour and self-indulgence of poetry, but once it’s off the page and resonating in someone’s vocal cords it takes on a life of its own.
These days, Melbourne is chock-a-block with spoken word events at pubs, bookstores and performance spaces. The word is out — spoken word is in.
Express Media artistic director Kerry Watson is also a veteran spoken word performer. She curated last year’s Next Wave spoken word program and in her spare time organises events around town and hosts Texture, a RRR radio literature and performance program.
She says spoken word transforms poetry through performance. It blurs the boundaries between written text and speech, and “delivers words in languages that you often can’t read on paper … and because it’s a person-to-person performance it’s a completely different text”.
She says the “most important element of a spoken word performance is very good writing,” but once performed it’s out of your hands.
Open mike sections are especially unpredictable, where anyone can get up and speak for a maximum of two or three minutes. It’s kind of like karaoke without the bad cover songs.
While content is important, Gaby Bila-Gunther, a spoken word and electronic artist who has performed in Melbourne and Berlin, offers another criteria: “It’s the way you deliver it, the way you interact with the audience.”
This can be a trying experience, she says. “Sometimes it’s tough because the audience don’t listen, no matter how good the performer is and how interesting the material is … You could be naked on stage or standing on your head … waving your arms, or whatever,” she says.
But, she says it’s a challenge worth taking. The appeal is the “immediate response you get from the audience — it’s like you’re published instantly”, and with none of the agonising waits for rejection slips.
She recalls witnessing her first spoken word performance: “It wasn’t like singing, it wasn’t acting, it was something different.”
Since then, she has gone on to organise spoken word events as well as develop her own performances along multimedia lines.
“Since last year I’ve started to bring in spoken word, bring in performance, bring in electronic music, bring in DJs and mix all these, blur the boundaries between all these forms in the one night.”
This may not sound very much like a typical “reading”. As Watson says: “There’s a perception that it’s going to be very boring … but you don’t have to clap politely, you can boo, you can heckle … The spoken word performer is not sacred.”
It also offers aspiring performers the chance to workshop pieces in a critical but supportive environment.
“Seeing people at regular events, seeing their work improve is such a good thing … Open stages are really important for that,” she says.
While aspiring performers may be discouraged by their initial forays into the world of spoken word, Watson is more philosophical.
“The space to fail, that’s in the nature of spoken word, in the nature of the open stage especially. Giving people a space to fail allows them a stepping stone so that they’ll be able to work, develop and get it right.”
This piece was co-written with Rachael Antony, and first appeared in The Melbourne Times on 16 June 1999.