Best of 2017 #10: Patrick Roche – “Every 40 Seconds”
“This is a eulogy for those swallowed by their own minds.”
Heading into the new year, we’ll be counting down the top-viewed videos on Button from 2017! Coming in tenth on the list, “Every 40 Seconds” by Patrick Roche. Congratulations Patrick!
Note: This countdown list only covers a small fraction of the brilliant artists who let us share their work on our channel this year, and is by no means a definitive list of the “best” poems, simply the ones that got the most views. Take some time and check out more from the past year on our channel.
“How many legacies are intentionally left blank on newspapers before you realize that you can’t rewrite the history of a people if our histories were never recorded?”
Don’t miss this remarkable poem from Tu The Judoka, featuring at Button Poetry Live.
“Someday I’m gonna have a child. She’s gonna have eyes like mine and such small hands. Just like she’ll need me alive then, she needs me alive now. I can’t say goodbye before I’ve had a chance to say hello.”
Don’t miss this beautiful poem from Neil Hilborn, performing at Button Poetry Live.
Make sure to check out Neil’s best-selling book, Our Numbered Days, now available! Keep an eye out for Neil’s forthcoming book, The Future, coming Spring 2018!
“When this tongue speaks, it sings the stories of my ancestors, it prophesizes the lives of my coming generations.”
Don’t miss this stellar poem from Vanessa Tahay, performing during the finals of the 2017 Get Lit Words Ignite Classic Slam, the largest youth poetry tournament in Southern California. Order Get Lit Rising today at simonandschuster.com, and join the #LiteraryRiot at getlit.org.
Appreciating poetry is often about patience: sitting with a poem, meditating on it, and re-reading it multiple times. With spoken word, we don’t always get a chance to do that. This series is about taking that chance, and diving a little deeper into some of the new poems going up on Button.
I need you to understand that this cacophony is the new language of my people.
I’m struck by this line near the end of the poem: “I don’t want you to apologize in English, or Canadian French; I want you to open your eyes.” As more and more events (including poetry slams and other spoken word events) adopt the practice of acknowledging the land and its original inhabitants, it feels like that line is an important addendum to that practice: it isn’t just about apologizing, or “acknowledging” colonialism and genocide; it’s about the more difficult work of taking a critical look at our everyday actions, our organizational practices, and beyond, to see how they either continue or interrupt that legacy.
The poem as a whole reflects this intentionality of thought, juxtaposing past and present, through the powerful image of the death of a color. What could be a challenging, abstract idea for a poem to build itself around is supported by wave after wave of concrete, narrative imagery– from the evocative use of the word “splatter,” to the family snapshots, to the video itself, which does interesting things with negative space and color.
Find more from Mitcholos here. Additionally, for people interested in the point about moving “beyond territorial acknowledgements,” here is some writing on that.
“Why do these men keep telling me that pressure is inversely proportional to volume when every morning I wake up, the expanding volume of my thoughts feels like a ship drowning in my skull?”
Don’t miss this incredible poem by Edwin Gwira Tamattey, featured contestant in the 2016 Button Poetry Video Contest.
