A very good morning to you all. Today, we shall be talking (performance) poetry and a bit of creative non fiction writing. Kindly DM your questions or comment on the thread below and I will do my best to answer them. I look forward to interacting with you today ☺️
So I began Spoken Word Poetry on 2013 at the @BookCafe_Harare when I was at uni. It started off as a way to fill in empty weekends but like most artists I quickly found a home there. Between Sistaz Open Mic & House of Hunger Poetry Slam, I was performing almost every other week
At the beginning, this was good practice but eventually you run out of poems 🙈. So lesson number one, you really don't have to perform every day. You can if you want to, but it's not necessary particularly if you don't have enough material or time to learn all of it.
Creative non fiction is something I began at Kalabash, Magamba's social justice blog. It is way more flexible than poetry because you can articulate ideas without worrying about whether it rhymes.
It's enjoyable, writing about serious things in a casual, humanised way
It's enjoyable, writing about serious things in a casual, humanised way
An example of a poetry video
An example of a page poem (which can be tweaked for stage if required)
shamsrumi.com.ng/2019/09/10/mas…
shamsrumi.com.ng/2019/09/10/mas…
There can be many facets to poetry and creative writing. It's good try everything at least once. You might be surprised at hidden talents you didn't know you had. Ultimately writing is for communication and enjoyment, so have fun with your words, themes, styles etc
For performance, practice makes perfect, learn to breathe, calm down, rehearse words that are difficult to pronounce. Some performances will suck & that's OK, sometimes an audience wants to drink and dance not listen to your poem, don't get mad, just perform as best as you can
