In recent decades, poetry slams and the spoken word artists who compete in them have sparked a resurgent fascination with the world of poetry. However, there is little critical dialogue that fully ...engages with the cultural complexities present in slam and spoken word poetry communities, as well as their ramifications.InKilling Poetry, renowned slam poet, Javon Johnson unpacks some of the complicated issues that comprise performance poetry spaces. He argues that the truly radical potential in slam and spoken word communities lies not just in proving literary worth, speaking back to power, or even in altering power structures, but instead in imagining and working towards altogether different social relationships. His illuminating ethnography provides a critical history of the slam, contextualizes contemporary black poets in larger black literary traditions, and does away with the notion that poetry slams are inherently radically democratic and utopic.Killing Poetry-at times autobiographical, poetic, and journalistic-analyzes the masculine posturing in the Southern California community in particular, the sexual assault in the national community, and the ways in which related social media inadvertently replicate many of the same white supremacist, patriarchal, and mainstream logics so many spoken word poets seem to be working against. Throughout, Johnson examines the promises and problems within slam and spoken word, while illustrating how community is made and remade in hopes of eventually creating the radical spaces so many of these poets strive to achieve.
Winner of the 2019 Lilla A. Heston Award
Co-winner of the 2018 Ethnography Division’s Best Book from the NCA
In recent decades, poetry slams and the spoken word artists who compete in them have ...sparked a resurgent fascination with the world of poetry. However, there is little critical dialogue that fully engages with the cultural complexities present in slam and spoken word poetry communities, as well as their ramifications.
In Killing Poetry , renowned slam poet, Javon Johnson unpacks some of the complicated issues that comprise performance poetry spaces. He argues that the truly radical potential in slam and spoken word communities lies not just in proving literary worth, speaking back to power, or even in altering power structures, but instead in imagining and working towards altogether different social relationships. His illuminating ethnography provides a critical history of the slam, contextualizes contemporary black poets in larger black literary traditions, and does away with the notion that poetry slams are inherently radically democratic and utopic.
Killing Poetry —at times autobiographical, poetic, and journalistic—analyzes the masculine posturing in the Southern California community in particular, the sexual assault in the national community, and the ways in which related social media inadvertently replicate many of the same white supremacist, patriarchal, and mainstream logics so many spoken word poets seem to be working against. Throughout, Johnson examines the promises and problems within slam and spoken word, while illustrating how community is made and remade in hopes of eventually creating the radical spaces so many of these poets strive to achieve.
The author reflects on the passing of his step-father and how the feelings of grief and bereavement translate into black masculinity, which tends to be rooted in keeping up appearances and ...suppressing emotions.
The authors of this article are students at The University of Alabama (UA) pursuing various undergraduate and graduate degrees. The majority of our academic programs are in the Culverhouse College of ...Business or Manderson Graduate School of Business. In the spring of 2021, we each enrolled in a data visualization course taught by our faculty sponsor, Dr. Chapman Greer. Through the course, we developed technical and design skills to analyze, visualize, and communicate data effectively. We employed these skills in creating a database that drives a Tableau visualization of Experiential Learning Opportunities (ELOs) at UA.
This article offers a response to the question, “How can we think about cities within the frame of a dramaturgy of sound?” Drawing on our scholarly interest in cities, we, the authors, consider how ...city meanings are produced and transmitted through music cultures. We tentatively explored this question previously, in a “Salon” discussion, recorded and available as part of the Aural/Oral Dramaturgies project, curated by the editors of this special issue at the website www.auralia.space. We recommend you listen to that discussion, here, before reading this article. Here, we reflect further on the relationship between sound and cities, offering a mixtape of tracks and parsing our personal experiences in relation to them to make sense of the ways music has shaped cities in our experience. The reflections below blend personal and critical perspectives to offer city stories, and stories of ourselves in the city. We have drawn upon notions of urban dramaturgy (Donehower; Ferdman) to find a style of writing which, “plays with the structure rhythm and flow of the city” in order to begin untangling questions of “what our cities are and for whom” (Dramaturgs’ Network, 2015).
This essay examines black masculine performativity in Da Poetry Lounge (DPL) and Leimert Park, two distinct but related poetry spaces in the Los Angeles slam and spoken word poetry scene. Parting ...from the popular discourse that figures these poetry communities as radically democratic, this essay works betwixt and between Mark Anthony Neal's "Strong Black Man" and New Black Man to examine the sexism and homophobia that is otherwise unchecked and undercritiqued in these poetic spaces. Within this frame, the Black male slam and spoken word poets in Los Angeles allow us to advance Neal's idea of the importance of a new construction of manhood by black men.
