Beautiful, but not exactly music: Poetic Voices

Before Therí Pickens '05 arrived, the main entertainment on Saturday nights at Princeton was the Street or the Street.

But now that Pickens' brainchild Poetic Voices is a weekly attraction at Café Vivian, pre-Streeters or those looking for another diversion can chill out by listening to the poetry, music and performances of their peers and occasional special guests.

With a cup of tea or a Fruitaza in hand, the audience is generally laid back, the performances impromptu and the mood very much like a big, supportive family.

Pickens first got the idea for Poetic Voices at a spoken word performance in Newark in November of last year, she said.

Spoken word poetry is very much like hip hop: lots of rhyme, a quick and changing rhythm and lines that sound a lot like regular speech. But it differs, Pickens said, in that current hip hop songs mostly revolve around "hot girls, hot cars and hot clothes." Spoken word poetry, by contrast, seeks to return to meatier topics — everything from politics, urban life and inter/intraracial hatred to the poet's experiences with love, sex, rejection and longing.

But spoken word poetry is not merely written poetry which happens to be read. It can only be experienced as a performance, complete with the poet's theatrical ups and downs of the voice, the pleading, insisting, lilting and stopping short which brings the words to life like a rhythmic monologue.

"Spoken word is poetry that transcends the page and comes alive through voices," Pickens explained.

Wanting to expose the campus to this art as well as encourage her fellow students to express themselves, Pickens organized the first Poetic Voices as part of Pre-Frosh weekend last April.

With the support of 10 departments and University organizations, the packed crowd in the Rocky common room was treated to work by Shani Moore '02 and Rick Ellis GS, as well as spoken word artists Flowmentalz, Mohagany L. Browne and Jive Poetic.

This year, Poetic Voices has become a weekly fixture in Café Vivian, with generous support from Laurie Hall, the Associate Director of Frist Campus Center.

Every week the "open mic-ers" differ, ranging from poetry performance, to singing, dancing, guitar playing or even juggling.

Soul Food, the new all-male R&B a capella group, got its start on the Poetic Voices stage when Darnell Motley '06 and Bobby King '06 got up to sing "My Father Was a Fireman" last October.

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"It's just fun, really laid back, no pressure. It's great to have the crowd into what you're doing, cheering you on," Olawale Oladehin '06, a Soul Food singer, said of singing at Poetic Voices.

And in general, the crowd is supportive—calling out people's names, yelling "holla" or clapping and cheering appreciatively when an open mic-er has finished.

This environment is due almost entirely to Pickens, who always warms up the crowd with a joke, a request for shout outs or friendly encouragement to perspective participants.

She's often the first to shout "holla" and, despite the frightening chasm between the mic on stage and the comfortable space of the audience, makes it seem like one big family.

Pickens began creating her own spoken word poetry last year and often performs it to fill in gaps when no brave soul will attempt the mic.

Monthly, audience members are treated to the electric thrill of renowned spoken word poets, brought in straight from New York's East Village, Harlem or Broadway's Def Poetry Jam.

These prizewinning performers speak out on everything from sex to politics to ignorance, from the urban experience to personal journeys. Their art is most definitely poetry — complete with mind-rocking metaphors, allusions, alliteration and plenty of rhythm and rhyme — but the words are only half the experience.

Last Saturday, for example, the audience of Poetic Voices was treated to the booming baritone of Kraal Charles, known as Kayo, performing his poetry. In short, his voice was mesmerizing — no one could escape it.

Like a Shakespearean actor or a great orator, Kayo's voice resonated from deep within him, pouring out like a great, smooth tidal wave. His perfect sense of timing and vocal quality gave life and humor to lines which would look silly merely read on the page, the most perfect of which was the refrain "I had to break up with her" from the poem of the same title.

But though many poems focused on relationships that went happy or sour, his most powerful poems spoke to universal feelings or experience. "I Can Move Mountains" spoke of the courage it takes to believe in yourself, while "Accustom" presented a litany of all the terrible realities we have become accustomed to such as school shootings and starving children in Rwanda.

In the future, Pickens hopes to attract a diverse audience. As well as Kayo, who is of West Indian background, she has invited Vanessa Hidary, a "Hebrew Mamita," and Mariposa, a Puerto Rican performer who did many poems in Spanish.

On March 1, Yolanda Wilkinson will perform. Pickens hopes that the word about Poetic Voices will spread so that more Princeton students can be exposed to the special guest performers and contribute their own work to the forum.

Motley was so energized by Kayo and his powerful voice that he was inspired to go home and write some more of his own poetry. If more people come away from Poetic Voices with that feeling, it will have served its purpose.

Undoubtedly, there are more Princeton students out there with a talent in mind, an idea to offer, an openness to new forms of poetry and expression that are waiting to be inspired. As Kayo says in "How Do We Know?": "But how can you mute something/ That comes from within?"