As an extremely shy person, I have had to find alternative ways to express myself so people can better understand and I can also get to understand my own self as well through the process. In grade 9, you could say I finally got to bloom. At my school’s winter concert in December 2015, I asked if I could do a solo performance of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” And I got to do it, without any instrumentation. Long story short, People loved it.
The second time I performed on stage was with poetry. My English teacher gave us a unique opportunity to express ourselves on stage, reading our own written poems between her band’s pieces. The theme was the moon. So I and a couple of my friends couldn’t let an opportunity like this pass by. After creating one big poem consisting of different stanzas made by each individual was a failure, we then decided to make each of our own poems relating to the poem. We were to perform in the University of Calgary’s Carnegie Hall.
My poem was called “My Moon, My Battery.” It was basically a poem about sleepless nights of existential crises, with the moon as my witness but also as a symbol of hope for the future. I wasn’t really proud of my poem. To me it just did not hold up to a high standard.
The day we performed was a great day with my great friends, and by the end of our performance it got even greater. After the entire show was finished, a woman from the audience walked up to me and said she loved my poem. She wondered if she could take a picture of my poem and read it to her yoga class. She then asked who was the writer of this poem. She didn’t realize these poems were our very own. Then she was even more impressed. After taking the picture of my little que card with entire poem written in. Then she handed me her necklace as a gift! It is a string necklace with silver beads. It remains as one of the most beautiful moments in my life, and a quite self-empowering one. It was a day I learned that you never know whose heart you’ll touch when you give them a piece of yourself. This is a lesson I have to keep reminding myself as a shy person: your voice always matters to someone, so don’t ever hold back.
Then when I got to high school last year, I signed up for the school speech club, that holds tournaments in categories including Solo and Duet Acting, Original Oratory, and Prose and Poetry Interpretation. Obviously, I chose poetry. Then I spent a week writing my own awesome poem. After finishing, I found out that the poem had to be a published work. My heart was crushed.
I still do poetry interpretation, as a different way of becoming a confident person, of learning to make better eye contact, and I still express myself a little bit by explaining the significance of the poem I choose to read, as well as meeting my fellow competitors who are just as passionate about Spoken Word poetry. But it’s not the same as when you have your own piece to pour your heart out on, and create a more deeper connection with the audience.
Anxiety is never easy to get rid of. Just because I have performed a couple times on stage does not mean I don’t worry about what the audience will think about me. Just because I choose to perform on stage does not mean I am not shy. I definitely am shy, but through performing on stage, to people with no strings attached, I don’t have too much pressure on myself. Plus, there is a general understanding in support among your audience, since a lot of them would never imagine themselves being on stage; it does take some courage after all.
So far, only Calgary’s café koi holds open-mic events for people of all ages to participate in, and the Shelf-life bookstore holds poetry slams for youth as well, both free of charge. But I wish there were more open mic venues for youth at different locations, not just downtown, and I wish more people my age did Spoken Word.
To the people who say that poetry is dead, think again. Poetry is not only not dead, it has evolved into something much more meaningful. In the past, poetry was only made to satisfy the senses, purely for imagery, and sometimes have a vague message about life and depict emotion without naming an emotion. Now it has become a hallmark for voicing the issues that plague our world today, filled with emotion for things that matter, not made to necessarily please. Poetry has become a performing art. Button Poetry is a popular organization that aims to expand and promote poetry as a performance and a path of self-expression. In its YouTube channel exists numerous spoken word performances worth watching. The performances that tug at my heart strings the most is Rudy Francisco, whose poems are authentic, dealing with topics ranging from self-discovery to love to domestic violence to racism. His wonderful wordplay remains powerful in all of his performances. And he is only one of the most fantastic spoken words poet out there, such as Sarah Kay, Phil Kaye, Jasmine Mans, and many, many more.
And now, it’s only growing to have even more issues get voiced such as mental illness, bullying and oppression of one’s identity in terms of sexuality, religion, and race. Spoken Word is a powerful form of self-expression, a doorway for people who feel alone in how they feel to a room full of people who have felt exactly the same as they do. A lot of my friends and people I have met in speech tournaments know a lot of spoken word poets from poetry slams posted on YouTube, and a lot of them look up to them, including my favorite Rudy Francisco, as well as Prince EA, whose poem “Dear Future Generations.” And “Can We Autocorrect Humanity?” are quite well known.
All in all, I just wish, because of its power, Spoken Word is encouraged and promoted more in Calgary. More venues of this particular form of self-expression for youth means more venues for confidence among youth, a chance for people my age to discover themselves as well as the world they live in, a chance for youth to get motivated to raise awareness on things that matter, to encourage positive change for our society, just by their voice.