Spoken word pervades campus with Sister Spit and others

"I was in space, hovering in the void./Some stars were glistening around me./I was in the motherboard of the universe/and could feel all of the signals in my feet and hands—/no thought could exist, just the sensations—"

Eric Schuman '12, head of student spoken word organization Wordsmiths, stands in a darkened Faculty Commons before a small group of students, delivering a poem entitled "My Afterlife" from pages gripped in his hand.

The setting for the event, Mind Your Jargon, is far less formal than what I would consider a traditional poetry reading. Schuman's reading comes sandwiched between a pair of rather noisy musical performances, each consisting of drums and electric guitar without a set list or a pretense between them. A projector casts images of buildings and other random scenes behind him, and a couple of spotlights illuminate a set of chairs, missing the makeshift stage but casting a pattern of bars across the carpet.

Wordsmiths is one of the more visible spoken word presences on campus. Said Schuman, "Our goal is to spread poetry throughout the campus, and also important is creating spaces of creative expression and places where people feel safe to do so."

This includes a range of events, many of which have a deliberately inclusive feel."We hold a lot of open mics," said Schuman. "Those are places where people read poetry, where people can sing, play guitar, do whatever they want."

He described  his experience of interacting with other poets through Wordsmiths as one of personal growth. "You see all the material that other people are making, and you're seeing it grow and you're seeing them get better, and you want to keep up," he said.
Schuman, though most actively involved with Wordsmiths, also speaks highly of Write Club, as well as the English Department's creative writing offerings.
"I'd say there's more of a poetry community," he elaborated, "which is why we exist – because we want to bring that aspect [of spoken word]. That's sort of the service we provide."

Beyond specific organizations, he has been generally satisfied with the presence of performance venues for spoken word on campus. "I think that if you look for them, there are [places to perform]," he said. "Specifically, I think that a lot of them are politically done, but I think that's great."

For those seeking a side of politics with their spoken word, a spoken word and performance-art collective with a feminist agenda called Sister Spit will be making a visit to campus on Friday, April 30 through the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance (FMLA) the event follows in the tradition of student organizations integrating spoken word into events meant to represent more political stances. For Irene Beauregard '10, the head of the FMLA, the event has been about a semester and a half in the making. "They're a queer feminist spoken word performance troupe," she said, "and they got started by this radical lesbian feminist writer Michelle Tea, who came of age in the rise of the queercore movement in San Francisco in the mission district, and she's written a lot of personal narratives or memoirs about her time there."

The group reformed with brand new members in 2009, following a brief hiatus. The new group is varied, with members covering a wide range of mediums of artistic expression. "The first group was basically the same sort of grab bag of feminist filmmakers, spoken word champions, poets, writers, zinesters, people who illustrate books," said Beauregard. "They're pretty multi-talented, and so is this group."

For Beauregard, there is a distinct connection between spoken word and FLMA's agenda. "I think spoken word is one of the most dominant forms of gender resistance right now," she said. "Because our language is so gendered, and because spoken word is such a political method of conveying your thoughts, it's very controlled and it just has so much potential for breaking down the gender binary and the ways you refer to people and the way you present yourself and the way you address the audience."

Raymon Azcona '12 is a spoken word does artist who is independent of Wordsmiths or the FMLA, although he has collaborated with both.Prior to arriving at Vassar, he had already developed an interest in spoken word. "I worked with a program in New York City, called Urban Word," he said. "I started writing spoken word poetry my junior year, and I had best friends in other high schools—I guess I was trained by them because I watched them so much. So I've been writing spoken word poetry for quite a long time."

Azcona hoped to continue once arriving at college, but still hasn't found a space that he feels truly speaks to his practice. "When I came here I thought that I would find that group, or that medium where I could practice spoken word with other people, but I haven't found it," he explained.

He has attended Wordsmiths meetings, but "realized that it wasn't my thing." He also performed frequently at events during his freshman year, including a Caribbean Student Alliance and Vassar Haiti Project collaboration dinner and FMLA's Her Story event. For the time being, however, Azcona has decided to stop performing on campus.

"People like [spoken word] as viewers and listeners for the sensations that it evokes," he elaborated. "It sounds great, and it makes you feel the emotion that the performer is feeling or is wanting you to feel, but I don't know if people are listening to the messages. I think they're just listening to people yell and scream and maybe cry."

The messages Azcona conveys are often not only political, but are based very distinctly on his background. "It's about socioeconomic issues, it's about living in an urban area, it's about the struggle of being in that area and having multiple identities in it," he explained. "With Urban Word I was always surrounded by people who were writing about the same thing, and when I wrote and we workshopped poetry I guess I found it useful because I could relate to everyone around me, whereas I don't think I have that here, to be honest."
Azcona, who wants to be an English teacher and plans on including spoken word in his curriculum, has instead sought out other channels for his work. Performing at Arlington High School, for one, has proven a great experience for him. "Young minds are more receptive, and that's a great place to perform and that's a great audience to perform to," he said. "And because Poughkeepsie is of the same demographic of where I come from, performing for them, I feel like they get more out of it than people could here."

He recounted a particularly moving moment in his performance from last year: "I performed I guess what you could call my coming out piece that's very angry, that's very sad and emotional. It was so touching to look out in the audience and see this little boy crying because I guess he was struggling with the same thing. The kids love it."

But Azcona capitalizes on the pliability of the medium as compared to other forms of writing, which perhaps explains the different meanings it takes on within the Vassar community and beyond. "I like spoken word as opposed to all other kinds of poetry, and I guess writing, because it's so formless. Because it's spoken you don't have to worry about all the form and all of those poetic terms and meter and line breaks, you don't have to worry about that. You just have to worry about expressing yourself."