Confession time: I’m obsessed with slam poetry. This might not seem like a big confession, but I’ve always felt nervous telling people. To this day, a lot of my close friends don’t know how much I enjoy it.
When I discovered slam poetry, I was in eighth grade and experiencing all the horrifying new emotions that girls tend to experience at that time. When I stumbled across the Button Poetry YouTube channel, I spent hours watching every video from it that I could get my hands on. I think slam poetry can appeal to anyone willing to give it a try. If you dislike poetry on principle, maybe this break of typical form will appeal to you.
I’ve listened to a lot of slam poems since eighth grade, but there are some that I listen to more than others. If you’re looking to get a taste of them, here are five about the female experience that I think everyone should listen to at least once.
1. “Pocket-Sized Feminism” – Blythe Baird
This poem is ingrained into my psyche. That’s not me exaggerating, either. I don’t know when I memorized it, but I’ve listened to it so many times that I can easily hear Blythe Baird saying the lines in my head. I would easily call her my favorite poet. Her book, If My Body Could Speak, was the first poetry book I ever bought.
All of Baird’s poems are striking, but I find this one to be especially haunting in particular. One of the lines, “There are days I want people to like me more than I want to change the world,” sums up the main ideas of the poem without needing to say much else. Baird has never released a bad poem, so if you like her style, it could be worth checking out some of her other work after this.
2. “Song of the Prettybird” – Shay Alexi Stewart-Willis
If you begin listening to this poem and think it sounds familiar, you might have seen Madeline Ford’s reading of it, which went viral on her TikTok account. When I first heard the poem, which uses an extended metaphor centering on a bird being valued for being pretty above all else to draw a direct comparison to the way women are treated in society, I entered another plane of existence entirely.
Shay Alexi Stewart-Willis’ poem is not only written with tremendous skill and talent, but they perform the piece in a way that makes the emotions so visceral. Let’s just say I wasn’t surprised to find out that Stewart-Willis, who was in college when this video was filmed, graduated with a BFA in Acting.
My tenth-grade self wasn’t prepared for the emotions that were unlocked while she was listening to this one. My current self, who relistened to all of the poems on this list for this article, wasn’t prepared for the emotions either.
3. “Fantastic Breasts and Where To Find Them” – Brenna Twohy
If you’re uncomfortable with other people talking about sex, this might not be the poem for you. For everyone else, feel free to give it a listen. The first minute or so of this poem has a lot of sexual innuendos about the Harry Potter series.
You might be thinking, “Emma, what are we listening to?”, but listen, you have to let Brenna Twohy do her thing. She’s cooking and we’re currently standing in the kitchen. This poem’s not actually about the Harry Potter series, despite what it might have you thinking; it’s about the way we are conditioned about sexuality and its correlation with violence. Twohy has dozens of phenomenal poems, several of which could have made it onto a longer list on this topic.
4. “Princess Peach Speaks” – Megan Falley and Olivia Gatwood
Is the thing you’ve been looking for your entire life a poem about nice guy syndrome and the female experience that uses the characters from Nintendo Mario games to examine it? Yeah, I thought so. Aren’t we so lucky that one exists?
This poem is hysterical. If you were wondering, I haven’t recovered from the decision to refer to the Nintendo character Bowser as “that fire-breathing turtle f**k” as Megan Falley and Olivia Gatwood do, and every time I think about it I start giggling. The poem balances humor with an important topic and is so fun to listen to over and over again. Every line in it is a win. I’m obsessed.
5. “Like Totally Whatever” – Melissa Lozada-Oliva
If you listen to one poem on this list, I hope it’s this one. Melissa Lozada-Oliva is an incredible poet, and this poem is no exception. It builds to a point and earns its climax, that’s for sure. I fear if I say too much about it I may hinder the way it lands.
Lozada-Oliva’s poem is a response to Taylor Mali’s poem of the same name and argues that the reason so many people speak with questions and uncertainty instead of conviction is that it’s a defense mechanism designed to ensure people, particularly men, listen to what they’re saying.
If this has ignited a newfound love for spoken-word poetry, please message me on Instagram to become my new best friend; I need more poetry friends. If you aren’t about to devote your entire life to binging slam poetry videos on YouTube, thank you for listening to some of my favorite ones about womanhood. They helped me become the person I am to you, so I hope they were able to resonate with you in some way.
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