“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!
“If you develop an eating disorder when you are already thin to begin with, you go to the hospital. If you develop an eating disorder when you are not thin to begin with, you are a success story.”
Congratulations to Blythe Baird on topping 2 MILLION views on this powerful poem. Watch more videos from Blythe here and here.
“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.
“When people ask me how I’m doing, I want to say, this sadness is the only clean shirt I have left and my washing machine has been broken for months.”
Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Rudy Francisco and Jared Singer!
In-Depth Look: Ariana Brown – “Ode to Thrift Stores”
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.
What can you create when the only thing in front of you is your hands?
My favorite extended metaphors also function on a literal level. I hear this poem as a profound exploration of how wisdom is handed down through generations, how class identity is shaped through family relationships, how necessity is the mother of invention (with “mother” being intentional phrasing)– of course. But I also hear it as a literal ode to thrift stores; the imagery is so specific, the sense of place so well-defined. The fact that the poem works so well on both levels is stunning; the thrift store is not just the tool used to get to the “deep stuff” in the poem; it’s inextricably linked to it.
That fusion of form and content, aside from just being gorgeous on a poetic level, generates an emotional energy that brings the audience into the poem, that gives the poem weight. Related to that, I’d also just point out how powerful the opening and closing lines of the poem are; both are quotes, both could be seen as “small” interpersonal interactions, and both do so much work for the poem.
