WEBVTT

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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,
bald 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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Tim's stack is a little higher than most.

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And we go around the room, trading poems,
pulling away our breastplates,

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letting the others peer in.

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And I realize,
halfway through the workshop,

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that for most of these poems,

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that will be the only time
they are shared aloud.

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And I realize also that, up to that point,

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I had only written poems to share,

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for people to say "Good job,"
for YouTube hits,

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for a room full of applauding hands.

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They were not writing for recognition,
they were writing for the sake of writing,

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to figure things out,
for the promise of self-discovery.

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Tim volunteers to read a poem.

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It's about paper,

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about how wonderful it is,
in a place like prison,

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to have a space where you can see
your own thoughts,

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hold them in your hand.

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We share poems about all sorts of things.

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There's a poem about
learning how to whistle,

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a poem about first kisses,

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a poem about the joys
of a good, long, well-timed fart.

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(Laughter)

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We share the dusty corners of ourselves,

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the parts no one asks about,

00:14:13.676 --> 00:14:18.075
the things that don't show up
on a police record or an artist bio.

00:14:19.164 --> 00:14:22.800
For that moment,
we are 17 men sharing poetry,

00:14:22.801 --> 00:14:27.929
not defined by our age or our past
but the four walls around us.

00:14:29.263 --> 00:14:32.861
Last year, I traveled
thousands of miles sharing poetry,

00:14:32.862 --> 00:14:35.678
but some of the most
talented artists I know

00:14:35.679 --> 00:14:38.155
rarely leave a prison cell.

00:14:38.156 --> 00:14:43.222
It's something I do not forget,
an unfair reality I carry with me.

00:14:44.334 --> 00:14:48.650
At the end of the last workshop,
Tim asks if we can walk together.

00:14:48.651 --> 00:14:50.411
I tell him "Sure."

00:14:50.412 --> 00:14:53.503
We open the door
and walk across the prison yard.

00:14:53.504 --> 00:14:58.327
Tim asks whether I will remember him.
I tell him "Of course."

00:14:58.328 --> 00:15:02.836
He says, "Well, kick some ass
out there. For us."

00:15:02.837 --> 00:15:05.828
And I tell him, "I will try."

00:15:07.008 --> 00:15:09.586
And with that, I wanted to end
with one last poem,

00:15:09.587 --> 00:15:13.632
a poem I started working on
when I was working in the prisons.

00:15:13.633 --> 00:15:16.492
Thank you all for being here,
thank you all for listening,

00:15:16.493 --> 00:15:18.247
it's been a real, real honor.

00:15:20.510 --> 00:15:23.935
"My mother taught me this trick,

00:15:24.615 --> 00:15:27.541
if you repeat something
over and over again,

00:15:27.542 --> 00:15:29.558
it loses its meaning.

00:15:29.559 --> 00:15:31.592
For example: homework,

00:15:32.392 --> 00:15:36.125
homework, homework, homework, homework,
homework, homework, homework, homework.

00:15:36.245 --> 00:15:37.706
See? Nothing.

00:15:38.047 --> 00:15:42.013
'Our lives,' she said, 'are the same way.'

00:15:42.014 --> 00:15:46.404
If you watch the sunset too often,
it just becomes six pm.

00:15:46.405 --> 00:15:50.219
You make the same mistake over and over,
you'll stop calling it a mistake.

00:15:50.220 --> 00:15:53.283
If you just wake up, wake up, wake up,
wake up, wake up, wake up,

00:15:53.403 --> 00:15:55.334
one day you'll forget why.

00:15:55.335 --> 00:15:57.747
'Nothing is forever, ' she said.

00:15:58.667 --> 00:16:01.906
My parents left each other
when I was seven years old.

00:16:01.907 --> 00:16:06.042
Before their last argument,
they sent me off to the neighbor's house,

00:16:06.043 --> 00:16:09.729
like some astronaut
kicked out of the shuttle.

00:16:09.730 --> 00:16:14.180
When I came back,
there was no gravity in our home.

00:16:14.181 --> 00:16:16.699
I imagined it as an accident.

00:16:16.700 --> 00:16:19.335
But when I left,
they whispered to each other,

00:16:19.336 --> 00:16:20.426
'I love you.'

00:16:20.427 --> 00:16:23.328
So many times over
that they forgot what it meant.

00:16:23.329 --> 00:16:27.706
Family, family, family, family,
family, family, family.

00:16:27.707 --> 00:16:30.232
My mother taught me this trick.

00:16:30.233 --> 00:16:33.722
If you repeat something over
and over again, it loses its meaning.

00:16:33.723 --> 00:16:35.897
This became my favorite game.

00:16:35.898 --> 00:16:38.404
It made the sting of words evaporate.

00:16:38.405 --> 00:16:40.239
Separation, separation, separation.

00:16:40.240 --> 00:16:41.455
See? Nothing.

00:16:41.456 --> 00:16:43.417
Apart, apart, apart, apart.

00:16:43.418 --> 00:16:44.840
See? Nothing.

00:16:44.841 --> 00:16:47.165
I'm an injured handy man now.

00:16:47.166 --> 00:16:50.649
I work with words all day. Shut up.

00:16:50.650 --> 00:16:52.439
I know the irony.

00:16:52.440 --> 00:16:54.322
When I was young, I was taught

00:16:54.323 --> 00:16:56.742
that the trick to dominating language

00:16:56.743 --> 00:16:58.417
was breaking it down,

00:16:58.418 --> 00:17:00.536
convincing it that it was worthless.

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.

00:17:04.963 --> 00:17:06.935
See? Nothing.

00:17:08.146 --> 00:17:12.467
Soon after my parents' divorce,
I developed a stutter.

00:17:13.176 --> 00:17:16.777
Fate is a cruel and efficient tutor.

00:17:16.778 --> 00:17:19.540
There is no escape in stutter.

00:17:19.541 --> 00:17:22.213
You can feel the meaning of every word

00:17:22.214 --> 00:17:24.208
drag itself up your throat.

00:17:24.209 --> 00:17:27.667
S-s-s-ss-ss-separation.

00:17:27.679 --> 00:17:31.198
Stutter is a cage made of mirrors.

00:17:31.199 --> 00:17:34.520
Every 'What did you say?',
every 'Just take your time, '

00:17:34.521 --> 00:17:36.759
every 'Come on, kid. Spit it out!'

00:17:36.760 --> 00:17:40.898
is a glaring reflection
of an existence you cannot escape.

00:17:40.899 --> 00:17:44.002
Every awful moment trips
over its own announcement

00:17:44.003 --> 00:17:46.048
again and again and again

00:17:46.049 --> 00:17:49.288
until it just hangs there
in the center of the room

00:17:49.289 --> 00:17:52.719
as if what you had to say
had no gravity at all.

00:17:52.720 --> 00:17:58.473
Mom, Dad, I'm not wasteful
of my words any more.

00:17:58.474 --> 00:18:03.047
Even now, after hundreds of hours
practicing away my stutter,

00:18:03.048 --> 00:18:07.395
I still feel the claw of meaning
in the bottom of my throat.

00:18:07.396 --> 00:18:08.908
Listen to me.

00:18:08.909 --> 00:18:11.732
I've heard that even in space

00:18:11.733 --> 00:18:17.304
you can hear the scratch
of an I-I-I-I-I-I-I love you."

00:18:18.998 --> 00:18:20.452
Thank you all very much.

00:18:20.453 --> 00:18:21.578
(Applause)