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Phil Kaye: Hi everyone.
(Audience) Hi.

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My name is Phil,
and I am a spoken word poet.

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If you are sitting wondering
exactly what that might mean, that's OK.

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A lot of times, people ask
what I do for a living,

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and if I say, "Oh, I'm a poet," they think

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that is some sort of cute euphemism
for "I'm filling out job applications."

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(Laughter)

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But that's actually not true.

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I spend a lot of my time working

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with schools, organizations,
and communities,

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performing and teaching spoken word poetry
to people of all ages and backgrounds.

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A lot of that work is
through an organization

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called project VOICE

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that I co-direct with a wonderful friend
and an amazing poet, Sarah Kaye.

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So I want to start today off with a poem.

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It's about my grandfather.

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Today is a special day for me

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because, even though he passed away
a few years ago, today is his birthday.

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The poem goes like this,

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"My grandfather is not a strong man,

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but he knows what it means to build.

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In 1947, after he and my great-uncles
returned form the Second World War,

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they opened up an army surplus store.

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They called it,
'Union War Surplus Store.'

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Their slogan, 'From the battleship
to a hunting knife,

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we have it, or we'll get it.'

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My grandfather was not a strong man,

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but he kept his word.

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The place was half store,
half encyclopedia;

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packed, all the way to the ceiling,

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with odd objects that somebody,
somewhere, might want.

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Steel toe boots, fire resistant overalls,

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a Czechoslovakian dental kit from 1947.

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Packed, all the way to the basement,

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with people that somebody,
somewhere else, might forget about;

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but not here.

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Like Richard -
Richard who did not work there,

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but showed up every Sunday afternoon
in his full military uniform.

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Never bought a goddamn thing."

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(Laughter)

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"But once, brought his little girl,
held her hand, said,

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'This is what it smelled like
when daddy was a hero.'

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My grandfather was not a strong man,

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but he kept us safe.

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We walked together in the park one night,

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and a jagged man,
with more tattoo than skin,

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walked up directly
to my grandfather and said,

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'Hey, old man!

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My pops used to take me
to your store as a kid,

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and you shook my hand once,
like I was a man.

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I still remember that.'

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My grandfather's office was upstairs,

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but he liked to work down
on the floor, lent anybody a smile.

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Everybody called him, 'Cheerful Al.'

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With his big belly,
bold head, long, gray beard,

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little kids would see him
and go, 'Santa Claus!'"

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(Laughter)

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"Six years after Union War
Surplus Store opened its doors,

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my grandfather had a son, my dad.

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He is not a strong man,
but he knows what it means to build.

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One summer, when he was a teenager,
he worked at the store,

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built a door in the back;
it's still there.

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Forty years after Union War
Surplus Store opened its doors,

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my father had a son.

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I am not a strong boy,

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but I'm trying to learn
what it means to build.

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One summer, when I was a teenager,
I worked at the store,

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built this display that went
all the way up to the ceiling.

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The same ceiling where my dad
taught me to identify things,

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'Oh, this here? This is
an old American bombshell.

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You may want to hold it,
but be careful not to hurt yourself.'

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'Oh, her there? She is
a young American bombshell.

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You may want to hold her,
but be careful not to hurt yourself.'"

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(Laughter)

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"Soon after my father built his door,
he walked through it,

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built his own half encyclopedia;
made my grandfather very proud.

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Soon after, I built my display,
I ran up to my grandfather's office,

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showed him what I had done,
'Very good, Phil. Very good.'

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When I asked him what to do next,

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he handed me an old piece
of paper, a beat-up pen.

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When I asked him what to do with it,

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he shrugged his shoulders and laughed,

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and I began to build
the only way I know how."

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

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So that's just one example
of spoken word poetry,

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poetry that's meant to be performed
as opposed to read on a piece of paper.

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Sometimes, people ask about
the writing process of spoken word poetry,

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and it's not that different
from creating something else:

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there are drafts and revisions

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and hopefully, a group of people
who you trust to give you some feedback.

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And it's a little bit
of what I wanted to talk about today.

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I want to rewind for a little bit.

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It's 2006, I've just started college,

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and I've been doing
spoken word poetry for a few years

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but only taught a few workshops.

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I find out about a volunteer opportunity

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to teach spoken word poetry
in the local prison system.

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A friend urges me to sign up, so I do.

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And to be totally honest, at the time,

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I don't really think about
what I'm getting myself into,

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I don't think about the nuances
of being a privileged kid from the suburbs

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going into a maximum security prison.

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But some version of it dawns on me,
driving over for my first workshop,

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holding on to the steering wheel,
thinking to myself,

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"Who the hell do I think I am?
What do I have to relate?

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Will they take me seriously?
What could I possibly teach these men?"

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When I finally get into the workshop,
the inmates come in one by one.

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There are 16 of them.

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We shake hands, we go around
and introduce ourselves.

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There is Marcus, who is here because
he wants to write a poem to his wife

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for their anniversary
coming up in a few months.

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There's Graham, who's never tried
poetry before but likes rap

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and is willing to give it a shot.

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And then, there's Tim.

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Tim leans back in his chair,
but his shoulders are tense, eyes frowned,

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he looks directly at me and says,

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"My name is Tim,
and I'm just here to listen.

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But I'm curious, how much do they pay you
to come in and teach us like this?"

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I tell him the truth:
nothing, it's volunteering.

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And he nods his head and says, "OK."

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Fast forward.
It's four weeks into the workshop.

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Guys bring in work
about all sorts of topics.

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Some write only about prison, the routine,

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the waiting, the smell of their bunk bed.

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Some guys never write about prison.

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They write about their families,
about their neighborhoods,

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the curried goat at the corner store.

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Some write about their innocence,
some write about their guilt.

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But anytime someone reads,
everyone else is quiet.

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There's a guy in the workshop named Gabe.

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Gabe is Italian.

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His heritage comes up
all the time in his work,

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his roots are important to him.

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One time, after getting feedback,
he looks around, and he says,

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"You know, I've never taken advice
from a non Italian before

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(Laughter)

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it turns out you guys
are all pretty smart."

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I see it happens slowly:

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the walls between us start to crumble,
we are not strangers anymore.

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I see in week 5,

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when the guys start to sit next to people
they didn't know before the workshop.

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Or week 7,

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when they've got so much positive
feedback for each other,

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they've got to write it down

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because we don't have time
to get to all of it.

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Or week 9,

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when they start quoting
each other's poems.

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I'm still an outsider,

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still a naive kid working in a prison
with guys more than twice my age,

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but I appreciate the fact
that they share their community with me,

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let me be just who I am
even if for only a few hours a week.

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It's my first experience
being in a community of writers,

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knowing what it's like to have

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a group of people
that want to make you better.

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I learn what it feels like
to tear some soft part of yourself,

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give it to a group of people
to gently mold it,

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hand it back to you
better than they found it.

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It's a maximum security prison,

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the last place I'd ever thought
I'd learn to let my writing be vulnerable.

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Fast forward.

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It's week 11; not everyone in the workshop
has brought in poetry to share.

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Tim is the most thoughtful source
of feedback in the classroom,

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but hasn't brought in
any of his own poetry.

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I don't know whether to press him on it.

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In workshops like this,

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there's all kinds of reasons
guys don't bring in work,

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from learning disabilities
to reading and writing issues

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to fear of ridicule or even violence
outside the classroom.

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But at the end of the workshop
on the eleventh week,

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Tim asks if we can walk together.

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I tell him "Sure."

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But I realize, as soon as I say that,

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that the only walk from the workshop
to the exit is through the prison yard.

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Walking through the prison yard together
is a significant act.

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Our friendship in the safety
of the classroom is one thing,

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but in the public view of the prison yard,
it's a risk for both of us.

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For me, there's a danger of looking
overly friendly with the inmates,

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something that the guards don't like
and can even shut the workshop down over.

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For Tim, there's a risk
of looking like a suck-up,

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a reputation that can have
very real and damaging consequences

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in the social structure of the prison.

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But we are two workshop collaborators,

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trading ideas,
trying to make each other better,

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so we open the door and begin walking
across the prison yard,

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in step, slowly.

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And to my surprise, Tim asks me

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why I haven't brought
any of my own poems in yet.

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(Laughter)

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Maybe, maybe it was because I was
inexperienced as a facilitator,

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or maybe just a little lack
of self-confidence,

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but I didn't think anybody would notice.

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I tell him that I've been stuck.

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He tells me that he is too.

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So we make a pact to each other

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that the next week, we're going
to bring in a piece for each other,

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even if it's short,

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even if the other person
is the only person to see it.

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I remember the best piece
of writing advice I ever got,

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which is from my ninth grade
English teacher named Arly Parker.

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Mr. Parker said that when you sit down
to write the first draft

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to not be scared but to imagine
a head on your shoulder,

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the head of someone who thinks

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you are the greatest writer
since Shakespeare,

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and to imagine what they would say
as they are reading your writing.

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For me, that person is my mom.

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God bless her, I could draw
an ugly stick figure on a dirty napkin,

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and she would say,
"This is the next big thing."

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(Laughter)

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What Mr. Parker was teaching me to do

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was listen to that voice
in my head that says yes

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to all my crazy ideas, to all our risks.

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And then Mr. Parker said,

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"When you sit down to revise,
to write your second draft,

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you have to imagine
another head on your shoulder

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of someone you respect,
but who can give you critical feedback."

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For me, it was another English teacher
named Mr. Clemson.

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Mr. Clemson and I
had a great relationship,

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but he was tough on me.

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As I read through the piece,
I could hear him going,

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"This part doesn't make any sense."

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"What are you trying to say here?"

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"This line is not nearly
as funny as you think it is."

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And with that, Mr. Parker taught me
to take risks in my first draft

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and see which of those risks
actually paid off in the second.

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The following week,
at the beginning of the workshop,

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Tim slid me a piece of paper.

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I slid him one too.

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And the next week,
he slid me two pieces of paper.

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And the week after that,
he shared it out loud.

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And the week after that, so did I.

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Fast forward.

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It's the final week of the workshop.

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Everyone has brought in all the pieces
they worked on over the semester.

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I see a room full of smiling men,

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each with a small stack
of wrinkled paper in front of them.

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00:13:00,986 --> 00:13:03,545
Tim's stack is a little higher than most.

240
00:13:03,546 --> 00:13:09,207
And we go around the room, trading poems,
pulling away our breastplates,

241
00:13:09,208 --> 00:13:11,831
letting the others peer in.

242
00:13:11,832 --> 00:13:13,914
And I realize,
halfway through the workshop,

243
00:13:13,915 --> 00:13:15,541
that for most of these poems,

244
00:13:15,542 --> 00:13:18,279
that will be the only time
they are shared aloud.

245
00:13:18,280 --> 00:13:20,590
And I realize also that, up to that point,

246
00:13:20,591 --> 00:13:23,525
I had only written poems to share,

247
00:13:23,526 --> 00:13:27,485
for people to say "Good job,"
for YouTube hits,

248
00:13:27,486 --> 00:13:30,479
for a room full of applauding hands.

249
00:13:30,480 --> 00:13:34,971
They were not writing for recognition,
they were writing for the sake of writing,

250
00:13:34,972 --> 00:13:38,595
to figure things out,
for the promise of self-discovery.

251
00:13:38,596 --> 00:13:41,340
Tim volunteers to read a poem.

252
00:13:41,341 --> 00:13:43,243
It's about paper,

253
00:13:43,244 --> 00:13:45,589
about how wonderful it is,
in a place like prison,

254
00:13:45,709 --> 00:13:49,643
to have a space where you can see
your own thoughts,

255
00:13:49,644 --> 00:13:52,068
hold them in your hand.

256
00:13:52,069 --> 00:13:54,834
We share poems about all sorts of things.

257
00:13:54,835 --> 00:13:57,522
There's a poem about
learning how to whistle,

258
00:13:57,523 --> 00:13:59,732
a poem about first kisses,

259
00:13:59,733 --> 00:14:04,545
a poem about the joys
of a good, long, well-timed fart.

260
00:14:04,546 --> 00:14:06,486
(Laughter)

261
00:14:07,326 --> 00:14:10,249
We share the dusty corners of ourselves,

262
00:14:11,099 --> 00:14:13,675
the parts no one asks about,

263
00:14:13,676 --> 00:14:18,075
the things that don't show up
on a police record or an artist bio.

264
00:14:19,164 --> 00:14:22,800
For that moment,
we are 17 men sharing poetry,

265
00:14:22,801 --> 00:14:27,929
not defined by our age or our past
but the four walls around us.

266
00:14:29,263 --> 00:14:32,861
Last year, I traveled
thousands of miles sharing poetry,

267
00:14:32,862 --> 00:14:35,678
but some of the most
talented artists I know

268
00:14:35,679 --> 00:14:38,155
rarely leave a prison cell.

269
00:14:38,156 --> 00:14:43,222
It's something I do not forget,
an unfair reality I carry with me.

270
00:14:44,334 --> 00:14:48,650
At the end of the last workshop,
Tim asks if we can walk together.

271
00:14:48,651 --> 00:14:50,411
I tell him "Sure."

272
00:14:50,412 --> 00:14:53,503
We open the door
and walk across the prison yard.

273
00:14:53,504 --> 00:14:58,327
Tim asks whether I will remember him.
I tell him "Of course."

274
00:14:58,328 --> 00:15:02,836
He says, "Well, kick some ass
out there. For us."

275
00:15:02,837 --> 00:15:05,828
And I tell him, "I will try."

276
00:15:07,008 --> 00:15:09,586
And with that, I wanted to end
with one last poem,

277
00:15:09,587 --> 00:15:13,632
a poem I started working on
when I was working in the prisons.

278
00:15:13,633 --> 00:15:16,492
Thank you all for being here,
thank you all for listening,

279
00:15:16,493 --> 00:15:18,247
it's been a real, real honor.

280
00:15:20,510 --> 00:15:23,935
"My mother taught me this trick,

281
00:15:24,615 --> 00:15:27,541
if you repeat something
over and over again,

282
00:15:27,542 --> 00:15:29,558
it loses its meaning.

283
00:15:29,559 --> 00:15:31,592
For example: homework,

284
00:15:32,392 --> 00:15:36,125
homework, homework, homework, homework,
homework, homework, homework, homework.

285
00:15:36,245 --> 00:15:37,706
See? Nothing.

286
00:15:38,047 --> 00:15:42,013
'Our lives,' she said, 'are the same way.'

287
00:15:42,014 --> 00:15:46,404
If you watch the sunset too often,
it just becomes six pm.

288
00:15:46,405 --> 00:15:50,219
You make the same mistake over and over,
you'll stop calling it a mistake.

289
00:15:50,220 --> 00:15:53,283
If you just wake up, wake up, wake up,
wake up, wake up, wake up,

290
00:15:53,403 --> 00:15:55,334
one day you'll forget why.

291
00:15:55,335 --> 00:15:57,747
'Nothing is forever, ' she said.

292
00:15:58,667 --> 00:16:01,906
My parents left each other
when I was seven years old.

293
00:16:01,907 --> 00:16:06,042
Before their last argument,
they sent me off to the neighbor's house,

294
00:16:06,043 --> 00:16:09,729
like some astronaut
kicked out of the shuttle.

295
00:16:09,730 --> 00:16:14,180
When I came back,
there was no gravity in our home.

296
00:16:14,181 --> 00:16:16,699
I imagined it as an accident.

297
00:16:16,700 --> 00:16:19,335
But when I left,
they whispered to each other,

298
00:16:19,336 --> 00:16:20,426
'I love you.'

299
00:16:20,427 --> 00:16:23,328
So many times over
that they forgot what it meant.

300
00:16:23,329 --> 00:16:27,706
Family, family, family, family,
family, family, family.

301
00:16:27,707 --> 00:16:30,232
My mother taught me this trick.

302
00:16:30,233 --> 00:16:33,722
If you repeat something over
and over again, it loses its meaning.

303
00:16:33,723 --> 00:16:35,897
This became my favorite game.

304
00:16:35,898 --> 00:16:38,404
It made the sting of words evaporate.

305
00:16:38,405 --> 00:16:40,239
Separation, separation, separation.

306
00:16:40,240 --> 00:16:41,455
See? Nothing.

307
00:16:41,456 --> 00:16:43,417
Apart, apart, apart, apart.

308
00:16:43,418 --> 00:16:44,840
See? Nothing.

309
00:16:44,841 --> 00:16:47,165
I'm an injured handy man now.

310
00:16:47,166 --> 00:16:50,649
I work with words all day. Shut up.

311
00:16:50,650 --> 00:16:52,439
I know the irony.

312
00:16:52,440 --> 00:16:54,322
When I was young, I was taught

313
00:16:54,323 --> 00:16:56,742
that the trick to dominating language

314
00:16:56,743 --> 00:16:58,417
was breaking it down,

315
00:16:58,418 --> 00:17:00,536
convincing it that it was worthless.

316
00:17:00,537 --> 00:17:04,962
I love you, I love you, I love you,
I love you, I love you, I love you.

317
00:17:04,963 --> 00:17:06,935
See? Nothing.

318
00:17:08,146 --> 00:17:12,467
Soon after my parents' divorce,
I developed a stutter.

319
00:17:13,176 --> 00:17:16,777
Fate is a cruel and efficient tutor.

320
00:17:16,778 --> 00:17:19,540
There is no escape in stutter.

321
00:17:19,541 --> 00:17:22,213
You can feel the meaning of every word

322
00:17:22,214 --> 00:17:24,208
drag itself up your throat.

323
00:17:24,209 --> 00:17:27,667
S-s-s-ss-ss-separation.

324
00:17:27,679 --> 00:17:31,198
Stutter is a cage made of mirrors.

325
00:17:31,199 --> 00:17:34,520
Every 'What did you say?',
every 'Just take your time, '

326
00:17:34,521 --> 00:17:36,759
every 'Come on, kid. Spit it out!'

327
00:17:36,760 --> 00:17:40,898
is a glaring reflection
of an existence you cannot escape.

328
00:17:40,899 --> 00:17:44,002
Every awful moment trips
over its own announcement

329
00:17:44,003 --> 00:17:46,048
again and again and again

330
00:17:46,049 --> 00:17:49,288
until it just hangs there
in the center of the room

331
00:17:49,289 --> 00:17:52,719
as if what you had to say
had no gravity at all.

332
00:17:52,720 --> 00:17:58,473
Mom, Dad, I'm not wasteful
of my words any more.

333
00:17:58,474 --> 00:18:03,047
Even now, after hundreds of hours
practicing away my stutter,

334
00:18:03,048 --> 00:18:07,395
I still feel the claw of meaning
in the bottom of my throat.

335
00:18:07,396 --> 00:18:08,908
Listen to me.

336
00:18:08,909 --> 00:18:11,732
I've heard that even in space

337
00:18:11,733 --> 00:18:17,304
you can hear the scratch
of an I-I-I-I-I-I-I love you."

338
00:18:18,998 --> 00:18:20,452
Thank you all very much.

339
00:18:20,453 --> 00:18:21,578
(Applause)