(I’m in the middle of overhauling this page; the list that used to be here was getting too outdated and unwieldy, so I’m taking a breath to update it. While that work continues, I’ve shared a few playlists and resources below.

EXISTING RESOURCES AND PLAYLISTS

• My site’s “Spoken Word and Slam Poetry Resource Hub,” including:
  • Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Spoken Word and Slam Poetry: This is the first chapter of my debut book, and it attempts to share some foundational information and dispel some common myths and stereotypes.
  • Big List of Resources for Aspiring/Emerging Spoken Word Poets: While the page you’re on now is more for educators and facilitators, this link is what I share with people who are interesting in getting into spoken word as a poet themselves.
• A Few Other Links and Resources
  • 30 Poems I’ve Used in Classrooms here.
  • An analysis project: A More In-Depth Look at a Few Poems/Videos here
  • Button Poetry’s playlist of “classroom-friendly poems” here
  • Bernard Ferguson’s twitter thread of poems on climate justice here
  • IndieFeed Performance Poetry (a long-running archive of spoken word audio) here
  • Disabled and d/Deaf Poets Anthology, Curated by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha here
  • Split This Rock’s “special curated collection of the poems readers have turned to most from poets within the disability community” here
  • The #TeachLivingPoets website here
  • Channels that post spoken word: Button Poetry, Youth Speaks, Slam Find, Write About Now
  • All of my own spoken word videos here

A PLAYLIST OF PLAYLISTS

Note: the last box here, climate justice, isn’t up yet; it’s a work in progress.

POTENTIAL STARTING POINTS + PERSONAL FAVORITES

Here are a a few poems that I feel like represent what makes spoken word special, especially in the context of how stories and images can be entry points into deeper conversations about issues. If I were going to share any poems with someone who knew nothing about spoken word, or had a bunch of misconceptions about it, I’d probably draw from this list.

• Ariana Brown: Ode to Thrift Stores
• Danez Smith: Alternate Heaven for Black Boys
• Suheir Hammad: First Writing Since
• Sierra DeMulder: Paper Dolls
• Rudy Francisco: The Heart and the Fist (and here’s a classroom-friendly version of Rudy performing this on the Tonight Show with the alternate title, Rifle)
• Patricia Smith: Skinhead
• Kevin Yang: Come Home
• Robbie Q. Telfer: Clowns
• William Nu’utupu Giles: Zombies (Made in America)
• Sonya Renee Taylor: The Body Is Not an Apology
• Ollie Schminkey: It’s Going to Be Okay
• Marc Bamuthi Joseph: You Have the Rite
• Terisa Tinei Siagatonu – Atlas
• Bao Phi: Refugerequiem
• And hey, why not, here’s one of mine that is specifically crafted for introducing poetry and spoken word to people: Kyle Tran Myhre: Poem for the First Day of the Poetry Unit in Language Arts Class

Lots more on the way.