Chapter 19: The Task of our Generation: A Practitioner’s Reflection on Spoken Word Poetry, Spirituality, and Education

“You’re going to share that right?” an educator from Madison, Wisconsin asked me one afternoon at a spoken word poetry workshop at my high school. At the time, I had never performed before, was an extremely shy person and had no intention of becoming a poet who shared her work openly. But something in the way he asked allowed me to feel safe, seen and able to do what before then I thought was impossible. I went on to perform my first poem in front of a few hundred of my classmates – and start a career with spoken word poetry, or poetry that is intended to be performed, that has carried me for the rest of my life.