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Spoken Word poet at MN Strikes Back

Final speaker during the climate strike protest

[POETRY PODCAST]: Life by Masha Ames

[TRENDING] Ep. 8 Painting with Lara Cayci

Listen to Junior Liv Larsen interview Lara Cayci about her paintings. 

[Episode 2] "Tune Out" by Kate Thomas

Meagan: Hi, this is the Poetry Podcast. Will you please state your name, your grade, and your pronouns. 

Kate: I'm Kate Thomas. I'm in twelfth grade and I use she/her pronouns. 

Meagan: So I know that you have a little bit of a background story on your poem so will you please recite that first.

Kate: Yeah so, I've found I spend a lot of my life waiting for time to pass. Some of this seems unavoidable: sitting in meetings, in lectures, in church services, in conversations. I quickly become uninterested, and shut down, nodding or uh-huh-ing my way through my social and school life. I find myself wondering how I ended up there, sitting in that class and talking to that person or whether there's anything I even want to do more - or what the whole point of this living business is. At that point, the other person has moved on to someone else. Depressing, I know. Or should I say, "a step in the wrong direction?" 

My grandma told me the other day (in a completely different context), "You always have a choice." This from a woman who wound up a single mother by 21 - at a time when the world was very anti pro-choice. And instead of saying she was forced into a tough situation, she calls it a choice. For a few days I wondered if she was just trying to be controversial with that statement.

Now I realize it's something to live by, what she said is that you always have a choice, not that you always have every option. Even if you don't have the money to do what you want, you can always change something. You can always make a step in the right direction, no matter how small. Yeah, making decisions is exhausting. Whether you do it or not - your choice. 

So here's a poem about choosing to tune out:

If you

can blue the voices around you

and concentrate only on the head ache

in your brain,

experience

the weight of your pen

tip

tip

tipping

from one side of you hand

to the other,

class goes by much faster.

Meagan: Awesome, so I can see a little bit of what inspired you to write it. What would you say that you want people to take away from this poem?

Kate: Definitely the idea that you have a choice and that if there is something in your life that you don't like, it's up to you to change it. But also the fact that like yeah we don't sometimes want to be places, and even if you don't going out, maybe that's the best option.

Meagan: Thank you so much.

[Episode 3] "Given" by Claire Wahmanholm

Meagan: Hi I’m Meagan and this is the poetry podcast. Would you please state your name and your preferred pronouns?

Wahmanholm: Dr. Claire Wahmanholm, she/her/hers.

Meagan: Awesome, would you please recite your poem for us?

Wahmanholm: I will yes this poem is called given  and it's from my new my brand new collection red mouth um and the poem starts with an epigraph from Euclid's elements book 1 and the epigraph is a point is that which has no part.

 

A given

is always

a Point 

of Departure,

a puncture,

origin of

 a wound,

some newness.

For example,

this given:

that points,

are partless

when really

they're couple-

numbered, binary,

the way,

no matter

how fast

it flies,

a bluebird’s

blue can

never outstrip

its bird,

or butter

drain from

its cup,

rattle shed

Its snake,

what would

it do

that bird-

Unblue, unselved,

blanched on

Winter’s Branch, 

absent against 

its white? 

without you, 

I'm only

the idea 

of flight.

 

Meagan: Wow, that was really gorgeous.

Wahmanholm: Thank you.

Meagan: what do you like best about this poem?

Wahmanholm: I think maybe my favorite thing and I guess, hmm podcast wise it's hard for people to see what this poem looks like, but it's written in, two word lines and then the poem is also written and couplets. So I think what I like about it is kind of the choppiness or artificiality of the line breaks compared to like how you might naturally break a line or how you might otherwise speak and kind of syntactically pause and it adds this kind of, or this overlays kind of an unnatural restriction over the more natural rhythm of speech and I think that unevenness is useful. especially if when you read a line of poetry pause just for a moment at the end of each line vs reading right through it and kind of sets the whole poem a little bit off balance, which I find useful considering how. Meet or kind of even the poem is structurally which I'll talk about in a little bit. You don't want to be too polished or too symmetrical or too neat. So I like this kind of uneven this that runs through it because of the short lines. I think I also like that the poem doesn't take a turn for the Romantic poet until the very end. Right like the I and the U when they come in in the second last stanza without you. I'm only the idea of flight. I think, I mean I find it surprising I mean I know I wrote it so part of that is a pretense, but you know it sets up this poem that might be about kind of math and then might be about the natural world and then ends up being about actually a couple at the very end, and I like putting that information at the very end rather than at than starting with it, which is another option, and the way that that is sort of set up like a mathematical proof in some ways it’s like giving all the statements that are true statements at beginning like given this given that math works this way even if the natural world works this way therefor we to work this way. And I like I like that about it. I think so those are some of my favorite things.

Meagan: Wow that’s super interesting. So did you employ and kind of sonic patterning?

Wahmanholm: I did, not in a Strict way that is not an actual pattern but it starts with the poem is broken into about I think four sentences and the first one has. What I mean, what I tried to do is to have a lot of kind of neat Sonic stuff. That wasn't quite exact rhymes so given An Origin or slant Rhymes, is always is a slant rhyme departure puncture newness partless are all sort of slant rhymes they’re all sort of clusters of sounds that are interesting but not exact rhymes as a way to kind of hook readers in the beginning part of a poem and then the Sonic stuff Falls away a little bit until you get to the very again end in the last couple sentences. What would it do that bird unblue unselved blanched on Winters branch absent against its white without you I'm only the idea of flight. So, do unblue you is a triple exact rhyme, white and flights is an exact rhyme and so it kind of starts with loose Sonic stuff and then steps away from it and then solidifies it into those exact Rhymes at the end and I wanted the final part of the.

Poem to end, I mean I like it when It ends with like a Sonic clenching or like an exact rhyme, so white and flights as kind of his final last thing that you hear and I wanted that to compliment the metaphor of the two people as like an ordered pair like a mathematical point which kind of runs throughout the poem so I wanted two exact rhymes toward the very end, being the last thing you here. 

Meagan: Did you put any restrictions on yourself while writing the poem?

Wahmanholm: Yeah. So this is hard and people can imagine what it looks like on the page so in the poem every line’s only two words long. The whole poem is made up of couplets to rhyme stanzas. Its four sentences and forty Total Lines. There are these compound words that run through it Bluebird, Buttercup, rattlesnake and I wanted because most of the metaphor of the poem is this mathematical like XY ordered pairs on a coordinate plane. I wanted as much of the poem to be kind of symmetrical or coupled or halve-able as possible. And so coming up with two word lines without ending on a weak line break was tricky and having each couplet feel intuitive rather than arbitrary was a little tricky, But Each couplet is between four and seven syllables total I think so, they're all about the same length. And so those were those kinds of restrictions that placed on it and I always like it when the form can kind of speak to content in kind of an interesting way and since the content of the poem is all about couples and Tunis and that sort of thing. I wanted as much of the poem to do that as possible. So that was a fun challenge to set myself which is all ultimately what like Poetic restriction should do you really feel suffocating it should feel kind of like doing a crossword puzzle it should be kind of fun, or like a maze, it should be a productive sort of challenge.

Meagan: For sure. Did you see any sort of line or stanza that was central to the poem?

Wahmanholm: I initially might have thought that like maybe that final that we talked about earlier that final turn to the I and the U at the very end as being Central, but actually I think it's the third sentence which I already read once the what would it do all the way through absent against this white? Because it's a question if the only question is in the poem and it's a question that isn't answered explicitly it sort of implies a rhetorical question. Like what would that what would it do that bird unblue unselved blanched on which of Branch absent against its white the idea is that without the other the blue part of it the part that kind of makes it what it is. It would be annihilated. There be no reason for it to exist in the world and then to move from that too without you. I'm only the idea of flight implies that like without the partner or the couple. That is the speaker would be similarly annihilated from the earth one way or another. And to me the Third sentence kind of raises the stakes of the poem in sort of a scary way, which I think is necessary to prevent the poem from being maybe to cute or too pretty right. Like you always want like a little moment of ugliness in your poems or threats right or tension somewhere in there. Then I think without that third rhetorical question there. There would be like a so what who cares so that's probably the part where if you took it out the poem wouldn’t be successful. I think 

Meagan: Did the poem go under a lot of revision or anything?

Wahmanholm: This one actually didn't go through much revision so this one went through two drafts. So the first one was I wrote in 2013 and a second one, which is how it looks now was 2014 and other poems in the book some of them went through like five or six revisions which is a lot so one or two is not so bad that’s a pretty fast kind of lucky things kind of fell into place with the original was not in couplets. I mean, I knew I wanted to do the two word lines so it was still in two word, but it wasn't broken up into couplets yet it was in regular stanzas. So formally I split it into the two lines to make the coupleness more evident, but it also had a longer epigraph.

So the epigraph it has now is all about points, a point is that which has no part. and then it had a set of the definitions, Euclid’s definition of a line, which is a line is breathless length and so the first third of the poem is pretty much the same and then I added on this conceit on to it where it’s like, okay the couple is a point they’re X and Y coordinates and then I was like well, but maybe each couple is a point and no matter where they are. You can always draw a line between them and it kind of became about like distance and relationships and that sort of thing, but I decided I wanted to pair back to one metaphor to focus the poem a little more so I was like 'nah lets just do the point and just skip the line part' so I took that part out and expanded on the  point metaphor so I added the bluebird, the Buttercup, and the rattlesnake head of the imagery of the natural world because otherwise, I was worried the poem would be to abstract or to rhetorical, to cerebral, and when in doubt always add more natural imagery like more concrete imagery you can't go wrong. It just makes everything a little more tangible, especially when the premise of the poem is math, which is pretty intangible.

So yeah, I simultaneously paired it back and also expanded on the part that I had paired it back to. I think of all the revision that this one went through

Meagan: That’s really cool. Do you have anything else you’d like to add?

Wahmanholm: No, buy the book. buy the book, everyone! I don’t know if its anyone jam but it's fun. there's a math poem in it. There's a couple there might be another math poem in here too anyways if you like math you might like this book. 

Meagan: Awesome. Thank you so much.

Wahmanholm: Cool, thank you very much for having me.

[TRENDING] Ep. 9 New Music with Yona Ketema, Henry Cheney, and Peter Michel

Listen to junior Liv Larsen discuss new music including 100 gecs and Grimes with seniors Yona Ketema, Henry Cheney, and Peter Michel. 

[Episode 4] "Your Shoes" with Yona Ketema

Meagan: Hello, this is Meagan with the Poetry Podcast. Will you please state your name, your pronouns, and your grade.

 

Yona: Hey, I’m Yona. I use he/him pronouns and I’m a senior.

 

Meagan: Alright, would you please recite your poem for us.

 

Yona: Your Shoes

 

My days

used to look like feet. 

Black and white checkered vans, 

Cherry colored Chuck Taylors.

Sometimes I see some new Nikes

Squeaking quickly down the hallway. 

I became comfortable looking at my own, 

dirty hand-me-down Adidas. 

Days bled into each other, for weeks, months, 

years.

Until one day, my last day of feet, 

I saw your small, simple, soft, brown boots. 

I was captivated. 

Not by your boots, but now by your smile,

your soft, flowery scent, your coffee worried eyes, 

your pink, fluent hair, and your encouraging presence.

After you, my days were more faces. 

I saw cars, buildings, trees. 

I breathed in, salty, fresh wind and air.  

I saw smiles, care, and kindness. 

I saw life. 

I never saw my shoes again. 

 

Meagan: That’s really cool. So where’d you get your inspiration for that or what’s kind of like the meaning behind it?

 

Yona: Okay so, I watched a movie called, “A Silent Voice,” and it’s about this guy who’s super anxious and he meets this girl who’s like deaf. He kind of like bullies her and then as he gets older - they go to school together - he sort of becomes friends with her. They both help each other overcome their insecurities. I wrote [the poem] as what he would say to her. 

 

Meagan: That’s super cool, who do you think your audience is for that? Like, do you think it’s the same type of people that you took your inspiration from or would you say you wanted to reach a new group of people?

 

Yona: I don’t know, I guess I didn’t write it for a specific audience, but I guess now that I think about it, an audience that would feel more while reading it is an audience that more sort of suffers from what he suffered from. I don’t know, he keeps to himself and is anxious like when thinking about image and his relationship with other people in his community, I don’t know like the guy in the movie - people in that audience would feel more while reading it. Yeah.

 

Meagan: Cool. What do you think your favorite line is?

 

Yona: My favorite line is probably, “Dirty hand me down Adidas,” because it’s fun to say. A lot of consonants. 

Meagan: What do you think is the richest metaphor or simile that would really resonate with your readers or listeners? 

 

Yona: Maybe. Probably when I said, “My days used to look like feet,” I was trying to use imagery, I guess, to describe what it’s like to just kind of walk around and keep to yourself. So like, a lot of times, for me anyways, I just look down and then like I notice people’s feet and their shoes and stuff like that. In the movie, they have like X’s over people’s faces so like people who are important to him, he sees their face otherwise they have Xs on them. So like, I guess I sort of made that more realistic and then added like them and then their feet cause he doesn’t talk to people. 

 

Meagan: Do you think that like shoes or sneakers or anything like that is a big part of your identity too or is that more of something that you see in every day life? 

 

Yona: That’s probably more something that I use to describe the feeling rather than it’s a part of me, but yeah. 

 

Meagan: Cool. Thank you so much. Do you have anything else you want to add on about it?

 

Yona: Not really.

 

Meagan: Okay, awesome. Thank you.

 

[Episode 5] "Of Dawn of Man" by Max Ritvo and "Albatross" by Kate Bass with Gavin Kimmel

Meagan: Hi, this is Meagan with the Poetry podcast. Could you please state your name, your grade, and your pronouns.

 

Gavin: Gavin Kimmel, 11th grade, he/him/his.

 

Meagan: Awesome will you please recite your poem for us. 

 

Gavin: Okay, so the first one is “Dawn Of Man” by Max Ritvo:

 

After the cocoon I was in a human body

instead of a butterfly’s. All along my back

 

there was great pain — I groped to my feet

where I felt wings behind me, trying

 

to tilt me back. They succeeded in doing so

after a day of exertion. I called that time,

 

overwhelmed with the ghosts of my wings, sleep.

My thoughts remained those of a caterpillar — 

 

I took pleasure in climbing trees. I snuck food

into all my pains. My mouth produced language

 

which I attempted to spin over myself

and rip through happier and healthier.

 

I’d do this every few minutes. I’d think to myself

What made me such a failure?

 

It’s all a little touchingly pathetic. To live like this,

a grown creature telling ghost stories,

 

staring at pictures, paralyzed for hours.

And even over dinner or in bed — 

 

still hearing the stories, seeing the pictures — 

an undertow sucking me back into myself.

 

I’m told to set myself goals. But my mind

doesn’t work that way. I, instead, have wishes

 

for myself. Wishes aren’t afraid

to take on their own color and life — 

 

like a boy who takes a razor from a high cabinet

puffs out his cheeks and strips them bloody.

 

Gavin: And then the next poem is “The Albatross” by Kate Bass:

 

When I know you are coming home

I put on this necklace:

glass beads on a silken thread,

a blue that used to match my eyes.

I like to think I am remembering you.

I like to think you don’t forget.

 

The necklace lies heavy on my skin,

it clatters when I reach down

to lift my screaming child.

I swing her, roll her in my arms until she forgets.

The beads glitter in the flicker of a TV set

as I sit her on my lap

and wish away the afternoon.

 

I wait until I hear a gate latch lift

the turn of key in lock.

I sit amongst toys and unwashed clothes,

I sit and she fingers the beads until you speak

in a voice that no longer seems familiar, only strange.

I turn as our child tugs at the string.

I hear a snap and a sound like falling rain.

 

Meagan: Those are gorgeous. That's awesome. So what made you choose those poems? This is for your poetry out loud competition, right?

 

Gavin: Yes it is, and then I have a third poem as well that’s pre-twentieth century that I find to be a little bit more boring, but I don't know. I really like the language of both of those poems. I think that they have like a solemn undertone but you're still able to play them in a way that there are lines that can be played, or that I choose to play in a more funny or like light-hearted way, I think. Yeah, I was just trying to them by the way that they read and I think when I first looked at them, I wasn't thinking about like what they meant necessarily but more of like how I like the language and thought it would be interesting to do. 

 

Meagan: What do you think is like your favorite part of both of them or maybe just one?

 

Gavin:  I like, I think, my favorite part to read is of “Of Dawn of Man” is the last line the “Like a boy who takes a razor from a high cabinet, puffs out his cheeks and strips them bloody.” It's not my favorite line to perform though because I feel like such a heavy weight and a poem and there's so many different ways that it can be interpreted that I feel like I don't do it justice in the way that I feel like nobody could do it justice which is kind of the difficulty with Poetry Out Loud because they're just some poems that are better to be read and not spoken and so finding how to speak it is difficult. 

 

Meagan: How do you feel like you can prepare for like the performing aspect of a poem?

 

Gavin: I feel like walking through, I mean making sure you understand the poem and it doesn't have to be like the correct understanding so to speak as long as it’s your understanding and just like knowing what you're saying what the words mean and then finding ways to transfer that understanding into your acting.

 

Meagan: Cool. So your competition is next week, right? So are you excited for that? How do you think you're going to do? How are you preparing?

 

Gavin: I am excited for it. The thing is, is that this year, I feel like I haven't put that much pressure on myself as I did last year. And Annika who I'm going to state with made an interesting point, which is that with poetry, you don't want to overdo the performance because then it's less genuine and you're not thinking about what comes next what you're saying in the moment. It's more like a recitation than it is a performance, which I think was kind of holding me back last year that I practiced so much that it just kind of like got to be like the same monotonous thing. So for practicing, I'm really just - I mean practicing the words and making sure I have the words correct cause if you don't have like perfect accuracy, you can get a lot of points off but that doesn't necessarily involve putting like heart into it. It's just like saying the words and then I'll probably only practice like once or twice how I'm actually going to perform it just so that it's more genuine at the actual competition. 

 

Meagan: Cool. What would you say to people who are thinking about doing poetry out loud? 

 

Gavin: I say just do it, like it's so much fun and it's such a genuine and like welcoming community. And even if you're trying to do it to like advance to higher-level, I think, don't be too hard broken or anything if you don't advance just because it's still a great opportunity to like practice speaking in front of people along with practice you read and you discuss poetry and it's it's a lot of fun and it's a good community and then seeing other people performance really cool as well.

 

Meagan: Awesome. Do you have anything else you would like to add?

 

Gavin: I don’t think so.

 

Meagan: Well thank you so much.

 

Gavin: Yes, of course.

[Episode 6] "How to Triumph like a Girl" by Ada Limon with Annika Brelsford

Meagan: Hello, this is Meagan with the Poetry podcast. Will you please state your name, your pronouns, and your grade?

 

Annika: Hi, I’m Annika. I use she/her pronouns and I’m in sophomore year.

 

Meagan: Could you please recite your poem for us?

 

Annika: Yeah so, my favorite poem is “How to Triumph like a Girl” by Ada Limon. So this is how it goes:

 

I like the lady horses best,

how they make it all look easy,

like running 40 miles per hour

is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.

I like their lady horse swagger,

after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!

But mainly, let’s be honest, I like

that they’re ladies. As if this big

dangerous animal is also a part of me,

that somewhere inside the delicate

skin of my body, there pumps

an 8-pound female horse heart,

giant with power, heavy with blood.

Don’t you want to believe it?

Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see

the huge beating genius machine

that thinks, no, it knows,

it’s going to come in first.

 

Meagan: That’s gorgeous. Who is that by?

 

Annika: Ada Limon.

 

Meagan” Cool, so how did you choose that poem?

 

Annika: My other two poems that I have for the competition are “It was not Death for I Stood Up” by Emily Dickinson and “Interlude” by Amy Lowell and the overall like feeling of both of those is pretty subdued as pretty like calmer like “It was not Death” is a little bit more intense, but they're still pretty like on the melancholy side. Whereas “How to Triumph like a Girl” is a lot more like inspiring, it’s uplifting. It's just like it's structured around resistance and like kind of liberation and I really like those themes and so I was looking for something - a poem that emenated those themes more than my other two had. So it was kind of my second poem that I chose after choosing “interlude” and then I chose finally for the competition.

 

Meagan: That’s so cool. Okay so, competition, so this is a Poetry Out Loud competition, right?

Annika: Yeah, so Poetry Out Loud is basically a program that is held in schools and you first compete at your school level, then at a regional level then at a state level and finally at a national level and it is a competition like it's a contest basically and it’s merit-based. So it's just whoever kind of finally wins, they have the ability to win $20,000. And then second place wins $10,000 and then third place wins $5,000 so it’s a really really cool program and each student chooses three poems to recite and one of the poems has to be pre-19th century or pre 20th century. And then one of them has to be 25 lines or fewer. So it's like a pretty open kind of easy to prepare for in a way competition, but it's very rewarding.

 

Meagan: And what stage are you at in the competition? 

 

Annika: So currently we passed, Gavin Kimmel and I who is a junior, he and I both passed the school level and the regional level. So now we are currently advancing to State finals which will be on the 25th [of February.] So who next Tuesday. That will be held in Mankato and then the national finals which are held in Washington DC in March, but there is only one person who can advance from the whole state like competition that can go to Nationals. So there's like a one in like thirty chance that that would be me, so like I kind of highly doubt it will be me, but it’s fun to imagine that, for sure. 

 

Meagan: For sure. So back to your poem. What do you think is the most exciting line to you? 

 

Annika: Well, for the “How to Triumph like a Girl” poem, I think I really like the “don't you want to believe it line?” because after the whole kind of exposition of that poem is like talking about the horses and how Ada Limon really likes how they're ladies than how she can connect with that because just purely because like she kind of feels that similar almost femininity in like that that race.So she's trying to convince the reader like I am a part of this as well. Like I could be a horse if I wanted to like I could triumph, I could run, I could sprint, and I could win. And so I think that “don't you want to believe it” line is the most powerful because it's like she's building up to this line and then there’s kind of just this like this “don't you believe me yet” Like can't you see it too. Don't you wish it was true that I had that much power and I think the kind of story or the message behind the poem is like, you don't have to believe it like you already kind of do. You don't need to have an 8 pound female horse heart to be able to triumph like a girl and be able to do these things.

 

Meagan: Do you think that’s part of the reason that drew you to it because it's such like female empowerment and that’s something really strive for at SPA or do you think that’s more part of your identity kind of thing?

 

Annika: I think I really identified with the poem because of that feminism kind of story that it had but also like when you're choosing a poem for Poetry Out Loud specifically there needs to be a clear narrative kind of because if there's not like a clear story arc a little bit, it kind of gets lost in the recitation. There's less to hold on to as the audience. And so I think I really love this poem because it is totally comprehendable. Like you understand every word that is being written and it's not like a puzzle to figure out like I understand this story. I understand this narrative. That being said, puzzle poems are great, too. “It was not Death for I Stood up” is one of mine and it’s quite the puzzle indeed because it is like 1800s. But yeah, I was really drawn to this poem because of all of its themes of resistance and I guess the fact that like I identify as a woman and so it was even more inspiring for me to recite that. Like if I identified as a man, it would be definitely different. It was definitely a self identifying kind of thing.

 

Meagan: That’s super cool. Do you have anything else that you would like to add to it?

 

Annika: If you’re considering doing Poetry Out Loud, you should. It’s like no risks. The only thing that you’re risking is your spot in the competition and so it doesn't affect your grades or anything and should totally do it because it's truly like allowed me to meet people and I've only been to like regionals. Like I can't imagine having people on meet at State and it kind of I think it definitely opened my eye to more about what poetry is about.  It’s about like sharing and connecting with other people and sharing your story and it doesn't even matter if it's your poem or not. Like you can find a little bit of your story in any poem, like it doesn’t have to be yours.

 

Meagan: That’s super cool. Thank you so much.

 

Annika: Yeah, thank you.