Writing of our Pasts for the Sake of Freedom

quick update

In an earlier blog, I mentioned the struggle with owning my weight and being transparent about my journey. Well, let me lead off this week’s post by saying that I am definitely back in the game! Since my last post, I am down 22.5lbs, and I have taken on a squat challenge
with a friend of mine. Let me just say, we are killing the game. 4 a.m. workouts are no joke, but we are doing it! So look out for more updates regarding my journey.

photo cred: Josh Collins

The 5th Woman is just a few days from showtime. Our preparation to deliver a power packed show has been painfully beautiful, to say the least. When we are not preparing for the show, all of us ladies lead full lives that keep us on our toes. Whether it be hosting a photoshoot, protesting and defending Palestinian rights, prepping media, sharing music, making coffee, teaching math classes, coaching softball, choreographing a spring showcase, and rearing primary school children all at the same time. Defining the lives of our team as simple would be an understatement. What I love most, though, is that even with all the chaos in our lives, one thing rings true in the voices of the 5th Woman: we all understand the battle of our words coming to life.

Several of the pieces that we will share in our upcoming show center around the various heart cries of women. Each voice is uniquely different bearing its own weight in the world from cries full of pain to stories filled with infectious smiles and laughter. What I enjoy most about our work is the battle to stay true to the essence of each our poems. Staying true is reflected in our ability to perform pieces as if they occurred just yesterday.

Sometimes, when we rehearse lines, we have to edit them to solidify the meaning of our message. And I love this because it’s so reflective of the way life works. We have to practice preserving the message of our work while keeping in mind that life goes on. We evolve. We grow past the moments that we’re writing about. And as time inevitably ticks away, we may even change our minds about the topics that we touch. However, our poems are still relevant pieces that can be healing for the people who need to hear them--at any time. This kind of performance often requires us to step back into our pasts so that we may authentically share.

I love the challenge of stepping back into a piece for two reasons. The first reason is the practice of gratitude. I am thankful because I am learning to lead a life full of no regrets. In the words of one of my beloved students, I am “learning to make grape juice from lemons, while you wonder how I did it”. I am learning to be grateful for the hard places that were so painful. I am learning to relish the sweet poems that reflect what may seem inconsequential to some, but life-giving to me. I am thankful.

The second reason is the practice of vulnerability. If you read my previous blog entry, I talked a lot about being transparent.  Being real is so important to me! When I die, I want people to say that I was never fake. I want people to remember me because I wasn’t afraid to share the grittiest truth--especially if that means I am the bridge to someone’s freedom.

Stepping back into our pasts for the sake of freedom reminds me of the movies Groundhog’s Day, Déjà vu, and Looper. These movies share a theme of reliving the same sequences over and over until solutions are found. Similarly, poets share some of the same pieces over and over because our pieces are layered. There are new nuggets of truth to be found with each listen. This is the beauty of the battle for our words to come to life. We hope you’ll join us next weekend, May 20 - 21, 2017, in these layered pieces that have been rehearsed from our hearts.

Why I Write Poems and Share Them With the World

Photo Cred: Stu Boyd

I was ten when I was first introduced to the art of spoken word poetry during the movie, Anne of Green Gables. In the opening scene, Anne Shirley walks through the woods dramatically reading lines from her favorite poem, Lady of Shallot, by Alfred Tennyson. Her eyes are dazed. You can tell that she's imagining the scene she's reading:

willows whiten,
aspens quiver,
little breezes dusk and shiver,
through the wave that runs forever,
by the island in the river
flowing down to Camelot.

From that moment, my little heart fell in love with poetry. Yet, it was not until I was nineteen years old that I began to share my poetry publicly. At that point I knew nothing about the world of Slam Poetry (a context in which spoken word poetry is most often shared), I just knew that I had words and stories inside of me that I needed to get out. I knew that it wasn't enough for those words to be read on paper or on the internet (my secret Tumblr), they needed to be read aloud. And so, with brave trepidation and a shaky voice to match, I leaned in and read my poems everywhere I could.

Slam Poetry is a space in which writers are permitted to share a spoken word piece in under three minutes in competition with other writers. The poet is judged by an audience based on content, performance, and time (you can read more about slam poetry here). When I began to venture into the world of slam, I was thoroughly impressed by the ways in which people shared their poems so vulnerably and passionately. Yet,though I was eager to soak up all I could learn about this art form, I became self-conscious of my creative voice. I heavily doubted the power of my words because when I first began writing poetry, it was not for the microphone. My early poems did not fit neatly into the competitive culture of slam poetry. It has taken me a while to navigate through these insecurities (and some days, I still deal with them). But, I have realized something in the process of embracing my voice: I do not write for the Poetry Slam.

I do not write for the three minutes of attention. 
I do not write for the applause.
I do not write for the "sake" of being raw or vulnerable or risky.
I do not write to slam my poems.

My words are worth more than a three minute competition and a possible cash prize. However enjoyable spoken word competitions are, poetry exists to do more than be slammed.

This is Not About Slam Poetry

Spoken word is a performance of poetry or prose that is spoken aloud with conviction. You might experience spoken word performance in living rooms, at coffee shops, at speakeasies, and in bars. This kind of expression can often feel like one of two things:

1.  the feeling of a sudden ice bath, full of shock and with the need to readjust the body to accommodate all of the truths that might strip away at our cultural misconceptions
2. the feeling of an early summer sun on skin, a gentle warmth that affirms the things that we feel passionately about

Here at the 5th Woman, we write to illuminate womanhood and the varied expressions and experiences of femininity in our culture. We do this because, for centuries, women have had their stories buried. Their names have been erased from manuscripts and the feminine footprint has fallen lost on the eyes of history across culture and globe.

As women,
we have been asked
to close our mouths
to close our legs
or to open them
to keep working
to heal quickly
to suck it up
to enjoy pain
to love monsters
and to raise them, too.

But there is a softly rising rebellion inside of each of us--it's a desire for justice and we have named it Poetry. For us, poetry is part of what happens when we allow our voices a space to speak honestly and be heard for all that they're worth. That's why we get up to the microphone and share verses on what healing from rape feels like, what it feels like when love harms the body, when trust is broken, and the heartache of being torn from our origins and forced to fit inside of nailed-shut boxes made of cultural "norms" that do not belong to us.

We are poets because we are tired of living inside of these boxes. We are poets because we keep the wild belief that our words are powerful enough to break out of spaces that exist to imprison our feminine expressions and mute our voices.

For me, one of the hardest parts of writing performance poetry is the brutal honesty. It's so risky to take the matters of my heart and craft them into a string of words with hope that someone might understand my kind of story a bit better. The work of honesty--even in fun and humorous poetry--can feel vulnerable and exhausting. But if the result of honesty is freedom, then it is so worth it. Through the art of spoken word, we have the opportunity to open our mouths and set both ourselves and others free; to unveil the beauty of all of the parts of womanhood that have been silenced into shame.

This is why I'm here. This is why I write. This why I overcome my shyness, and I share my poems on microphones. We are here for healing, truth, and hope, too. We don't shy away from hard topics. We choose to lean in, because people need us to--we need us to.  We are here, not for the applause of the poetry slam, but to use our voices to cultivate freedom and celebrate the shapes, textures, and story lines of human beings. 

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We're raising $4,500 by May 5, 2017. Will you help us build the 5th Woman? Learn more at the link below!