As its name suggests, spoken word poetry is the art form of reciting poems of any kind. Performances tend to focus on key visual and audio techniques such as movement, tone, emotion, rhyme and improvisation to name a few. Many spoken word poetry performances are very personal and revolve around a particular theme or message that the poet is attempting to convey to an audience. Two performances, To the Boys Who May One Day Date My Daughter, performed by Jesse Parent and Pretty by Katie Makkai in 2014 and 2002 respectively, both share similar themes. Parent’s poem is a passionate message to boys who may fall in love with his daughter, warning them that if they hurt her, he will hurt them. Parent also shows that he is willing to accept boys if
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This technique shows that she is extremely passionate about her message, and this helps create a stronger bond between the audience and the performer. Parent uses much less physical movement to convey his points, but uses his facial expressions to show a variety of different emotions. This can be seen when he transitions from being rather sinister to quite warm and welcoming as he goes from threatening the future boyfriend to showing him kindness if he protects and loves his daughter. In terms of tone, there is a noticeable contrast between the two performances. As mentioned above, Makkai shows her passion through the intensity of her voice. This intensity along with her message, create a feeling of hatred towards society as from Makkai’s experiences, it has made her believe that looks mean everything. This overarching build up of hate for society is nowhere to be seen in Parent’s performance, as even though he too is passionate about his message, his lines are rather witty and there are noticeable traces of dark humour and satire. A perfect example of this is in his finishing line, “To the girls who would one day date my daughter, my wife, is a better shot than I am”. This line is also an acknowledgement of gender diversity as it is becoming more accepted within
This technique shows that she is extremely passionate about her message, and this helps create a stronger bond between the audience and the performer. Parent uses much less physical movement to convey his points, but uses his facial expressions to show a variety of different emotions. This can be seen when he transitions from being rather sinister to quite warm and welcoming as he goes from threatening the future boyfriend to showing him kindness if he protects and loves his daughter. In terms of tone, there is a noticeable contrast between the two performances. As mentioned above, Makkai shows her passion through the intensity of her voice. This intensity along with her message, create a feeling of hatred towards society as from Makkai’s experiences, it has made her believe that looks mean everything. This overarching build up of hate for society is nowhere to be seen in Parent’s performance, as even though he too is passionate about his message, his lines are rather witty and there are noticeable traces of dark humour and satire. A perfect example of this is in his finishing line, “To the girls who would one day date my daughter, my wife, is a better shot than I am”. This line is also an acknowledgement of gender diversity as it is becoming more accepted within