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Teaching artist Deborah Magdalena demonstrates how to bring a poem to life through an expressive spoken word performance. 

Vocabulary You Will Learn:

• Spoken word poetry—An authentic poetic freestyle way of performing poetry on topics that are important to the performer.
• Connection—The practice in spoken word poetry of choosing connection words to emphasize and bring to life. This helps to bring passion and meaning to the reading of the poem. 
• Vocalization—The use of volume, pitch, and tone when performing spoken word poetry to further bring the poem to life. Vocalization is especially important when speaking your connection words. 
• Movement—A way of moving the body while performing spoken word poetry in order to bring expression to the poem, especially the connection words.

Materials You Will Need:

• A poem—preferably one you wrote yourself, but if you don’t have that, you can use a favorite poem by a different author.

How to Create Your Own Spoken Word Performance

1. First, select a poem to perform. You can choose one you’ve written yourself, or a favorite poem by another author.
2. Next, choose a few words in the poem that feel especially powerful or important. These are your connection words, and they will help you to infuse your performance with passion and meaning. You may want to highlight or underline these words in the text.
3. Now, think about how you can use vocalization to emphasize your connection words and bring your poem to life. How do you want the audience to feel as they hear your poem? Experiment with different vocalizations to evoke these emotions. How does it sound when you say your connection words in a loud, booming voice as opposed to very softly? What about if you use a high-pitched voice versus a low-pitched one? Or if you speak with a very serious tone, as opposed to a silly one? Try different vocalizations to see what feels right to you.

4. Next, you’ll add movement to your connection words. Your movement can be big or subtle; it can be obvious or unexpected. Think again about what you want the audience to feel and how the movement can help to emphasize and bring expression to your connection words.
5. Finally, it’s time to combine everything you’ve learned into your final spoken work performance! Read your poem aloud, being sure to emphasize your connection words while using the vocalizations and movements that you created to highlight the words and make them stand out.

In this video, Deborah shows us how to use connection, vocalization, and movement to create a dynamic spoken word performance. If you want to go even further, think about these questions: 

• How does the performance of your poem change when you choose different connection words? Select a few different words and read the poem a second time, emphasizing these words instead. Do you find that this brings different meaning to the poem? 
• How do you find that the performance of your poem changes if you use different vocalizations or movements with your connection words? Does speaking the poem very softly with subtle movements bring different meaning to the poem than if you read it in a booming voice with bold, exaggerated movements?
• If you didn’t create your own poem to perform, try doing that now. What is something important to you that you would like to capture in a spoken word poem? How can you use what you’ve learned to express what you want the audience to know about this subject?
• At the beginning of the video, Deborah talks about how during challenging times, she found solace and strength in spoken word. Is there a form of creative expression that brings you similar comfort during difficult times?

Accessibility

Don’t forget that you can turn on “Closed Captioning” to view the YouTube video with English captions.

More about the Teaching Artist

Deborah Magdalena (she/her) is a teaching artist based out of South Florida who wants to poetically encourage people to be the best they can be and live the best life they can. Through her talents of being able to creatively communicate, express with emotion, and connect with audiences empathetically, she feels that it is her responsibility to not only entertain but to inspire positive growth in people and our world community.

Kennedy Center Education Digital Learning

Eric Friedman 
Director, Digital Learning

Kenny Neal 
Manager, Digital Education Resources

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Manager, Operations and Audience Engagement

JoDee Scissors 
Content Specialist, Digital Learning

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Generous support for educational programs at the Kennedy Center is provided by the U.S. Department of Education.

Gifts and grants to educational programs at the Kennedy Center are provided by The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; Bank of America; Capital One; The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; Carnegie Corporation of New York; The Ednah Root Foundation; Harman Family Foundation; William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust; the Kimsey Endowment; The Kiplinger Foundation; Laird Norton Family Foundation; Lois and Richard England Family Foundation; Dr. Gary Mather and Ms. Christina Co Mather; The Markow Totevy Foundation; Dr. Gerald and Paula McNichols Foundation; The Morningstar Foundation; Myra and Leura Younker Endowment Fund; The Irene Pollin Audience Development and Community Engagement Initiatives;

Prince Charitable Trusts; Dr. Deborah Rose and Dr. Jan A. J. Stolwijk; Rosemary Kennedy Education Fund; The Embassy of the United Arab Emirates; The Victory Foundation; The Volgenau Foundation; Volkswagen Group of America; Jackie Washington; GRoW @ Annenberg and Gregory Annenberg Weingarten and Family; Wells Fargo; and generous contributors to the Abe Fortas Memorial Fund and by a major gift to the fund from the late Carolyn E. Agger, widow of Abe Fortas. Additional support is provided by the National Committee for the Performing Arts..

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