Teeth by Phil Kaye
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“Fear of joy is the darkest of captivities.” In this Button Poetry video, Phil Kaye reads his poem “Teeth” at Gray Area in San Francisco.
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Genre: Spoken Word
BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez
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“I wanted to tell people how I became this woman with razor blades between her teeth.” BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, directed by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, chronicles the life and work of poet and political activist Sonia Sanchez, including her emergence as a seminal figure in the Black Arts Movement, her tireless political activism, and a poetry career so great Maya Angelou called her “a lion in literature’s forest.” Sanchez is the recipient of the 2022 Jackson Poetry Prize.
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Natasha Carrizosa
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“Even when I was starving, I was eating. Inhaling words like a kid with a lunch card, like this is a meal I might miss,” reads Natasha Carrizosa from her poem “ABC ME” at Station Museum in Houston, Texas for Write About Now Poetry.
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Popular Words Invented by Authors
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From William Shakespeare to Dr. Seuss, this episode of Otherwords, a PBS Storied web series hosted by sociolinguist Dr. Erica Brozovsky, digs deep into verbal innovations and the history of words created by writers.
The Year of No Grudges
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“I know most people try hard / to do good and find out too late / they should have tried softer.” Andrea Gibson reads “The Year of No Grudges, or Instead of Writing a Furious Text, I Try a Poem” from their latest poetry collection, You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry, 2021), in this video from a stage in Longmont, Colorado.
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Greg Tate: What Is Hip Hop?
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“Hip-hop is Ralph Ellison, who once said the blues is like running a razor blade along an open sore.” In this audio recording from the 1996 album Flippin’ the Script: Rap Meets Poetry released by Mouth Almighty Records, author and critic Greg Tate reads his poem “What Is Hip Hop?” The influential journalist and author of Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America (Simon & Schuster, 1992), died at the age of sixty-three on December 7, 2021.
Sea Turtle by Mason Granger
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“Sea turtle, be snapping. See poetry, be action.” In this video, Mason Granger reads his poem “Sea Turtle” for Write About Now Poetry, which hosts a weekly spoken word open mic series in Houston.
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Look at Me
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“For nearly two hours, someone stood in my doorway watching me.” Get in the Halloween spirit with this animated video based on a true story produced by Jezebel for their annual Scary Story contest. Read this fiction prompt from The Time Is Now for inspiration to write your own terrifying tale.
Adam Be a Migrant Farmer
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“You, a wild orchid and me, a rice picker. I pluck you as if you were a food to eat.” In this 2018 Button Poetry Live performance, Melania Luisa Marte reads her poem “Adam Be a Migrant Farmer.”
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Summertime
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“These poets really took me on a journey. Through each of their poems you got to essentially travel across L.A. into different neighborhoods, into different people’s spaces,” says director Carlos López Estrada about meeting the twenty-seven spoken word poets from the nonprofit Get Lit who cowrote and are featured in his new film, Summertime.
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