Spoken word is an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a 20th-century continuation of an ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetics of recitation and word play, such as the performer's live intonation and voice inflection. Spoken word is a "catchall" term that includes any kind of poetry recited aloud, including poetry readings, poetry slams, jazz poetry, pianologues, musical readings, and hip hop music, and can include comedy routines and prose monologues. Unlike written poetry, the poetic text takes its quality less from the visual aesthetics on a page, but depends more on phonaesthetics, or the aesthetics of sound.
Sekou Sundiata was an African-American poet and performer, as well as a teacher at The New School in New York City. His students include musicians Ani DiFranco and Mike Doughty. His plays include The Circle Unbroken is a Hard Bop, The Mystery of Love, Udu, and The 51st Dream State. He also released several albums, including Longstoryshort and The Blue Oneness of Dreams. The Blue Oneness of Dreams was nominated for a Grammy Award. In 2000 Sundiata received the Creative Capital Performing Arts Award.
Saul Stacey Williams is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, musician, poet, writer, and actor. He is known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop, and for his lead roles in the 1998 independent film Slam and the 2013 jukebox musical Holler If Ya Hear Me.
Bob Holman is an American poet and poetry activist, most closely identified with the oral tradition, the spoken word, and poetry slam. As a promoter of poetry in many media, Holman has spent the last four decades working variously as an author, editor, publisher, performer, emcee of live events, director of theatrical productions, producer of films and television programs, record label executive, university professor, and archivist. He was described by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in The New Yorker as "the postmodern promoter who has done more to bring poetry to cafes and bars than anyone since Ferlinghetti."
Jayne Cortez was an African-American poet, activist, small press publisher and spoken-word performance artist whose voice is celebrated for its political, surrealistic and dynamic innovations in lyricism and visceral sound. Her writing is part of the canon of the Black Arts Movement. She was married to jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman from 1954 to 1964, and their son is jazz drummer Denardo Coleman. In 1975, Cortez married painter, sculptor, and printmaker Melvin Edwards, and they lived in Dakar, Senegal, and New York City.
Russell Simmons presents Def Poetry, better known as simply Def Poetry Jam or Def Poetry, is a spoken word poetry television series hosted by Mos Def and airing on HBO between 2002 and 2007. The series features performances by established and up-and-coming spoken word poets. Performances also include special appearances by well-known actors and musicians, as well as occasional performances by Mos Def himself. Co-created by Bruce George, Danny Simmons, Deborah Pointer, Stan Lathan, and Russell Simmons, the show is a spin-off of the popular Def Comedy Jam which began airing on HBO in the 1990s. As with Def Comedy, Simmons appears at the end of every episode to thank the audience.
Lemon Andersen is an American poet, spoken word artist and actor. He is sometimes credited as Lemon. He is the author of County of Kings and the subject of the documentary Lemon. In his November 2011 TEDYouth talk Please don't take my Air Jordans, Lemon's performance of the title poem by Reg E. Gaines is followed by his own spoken-word riff on the influence of Gaines, Etheridge Knight, and other poets on his creative growth as a poet and spoken word artist.
Tracie Morris is an American poet. She is also a performance artist, vocalist, voice consultant, creative non-fiction writer, critic, scholar, bandleader, actor and non-profit consultant. Morris is from Brooklyn, New York. Morris' experimental sound poetry is progressive and improvisational. She is a tenured professor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. One of the world's most well-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. She has won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award. She has been nominated for a Grammy Award for her poetry album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. Additionally, she was named as one of Oprah Winfrey's 25 "Living Legends". Giovanni is a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective
Readings by Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation is the third and final spoken word album by the American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac, released in January 1960 on Verve Records. The album was recorded during 1959, prior to the publication of Kerouac's sixth novel, Doctor Sax.
James Ivy Richardson II is an American performance poet, spoken word artist, songwriter, and author. He won his first Grammy Award in 2023 with his sixth album, The Poet Who Sat by the Door.
The String Theory is an international artist collective that provides a creative joint venture production platform for composers, artists, musicians and visual artists from different countries. The collective was founded in 2006. Their first project was The Berlin String Theory in 2006–2008, followed by The Göteborg String Theory in 2009–11. Since 2012 the collective's orchestra goes by the name The String Theory and has performed live with Swedish-Argentinian artist José González during a number of European and North American tours. Live recordings from those tours are featured on the double album Live in Europe. In November 2019, the ensemble were nominated for a Grammy Award 2020 in the category of Best Spoken Word Album for their collaborative album with American spoken word poet Sekou Andrews, Sekou Andrews & The String Theory.
Adeena Karasick is a Canadian poet, performance artist, and essayist. Born in Winnipeg of Russian Jewish heritage, she is the distinguished author of 13 books of poetry and poetic theory, as well as a series of parodic videopoems, such as the ironic "I Got a Crush on Osama" that was featured on Fox News and screened at film festivals, Ceci n'est pas un Téléphone or Hooked on Telephonics: A Pata-philophonemic Investigation of the Telephone created for The Media Ecology Association, "Lingual Ladies" a post-modern parody of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies", and "This is Your Final Nitrous" a poetic response to the Burning Man Festival., and White Abbot, a parodic videopoem Karasick created during the writing of Salome: Woman of Valor, dedicated to the impossible anguish of forbidden love.
PoemJazz is an album by poet, essayist, literary critic, translator and America's 39th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress Robert Pinsky, and Grammy-Award-winning pianist, composer, and arranger Laurence Hobgood.
Aja Monet, , is an American contemporary poet, writer, lyricist and activist based in Los Angeles, California.
Davidson Garrett, also known as King Lear of the Taxi, is an American poet and actor living in New York City, New York. He drove a New York City yellow taxi cab from 1978 until 2018 to supplement his acting and writing career. Garrett has authored six books of poetry, and has been published in many literary magazines, and poetry reviews.
Daniel Clive McCallum is a film composer, conductor, and orchestrator. He is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Nomi Abadi is an American born Syrian-Egyptian Jewish pianist, vocalist, actor and activist. In November 2019, she played piano on the Grammy Award nominated album Sekou Andrews & The String Theory nominated in 2020 in the category of Best Spoken Word Album.
The Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album is a category in the annual Grammy Awards, that was first presented at the 2023 show on February 5, 2023.
