Project VOICE and Saint David's

Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye, Co-Directors of Project V.O.I.C.E., visited Saint David's today to deliver a "Living Poetry" performance for boys in Grades Six through Eight.

The two Spoken Word Poets have performed internationally and travel around the world to provide Spoken Word performances and run poetry workshops in schools. They performed their poems, rich in imagery, humor, and insight, both individually and jointly for the boys.

Sarah and Phil began with a poem about spoken poetry itself, noting its ubiquity: "poetry rose with the first sunrise" and is "found in the words of Gandhi." They sought to demystify the writing of poetry for the boys, emphasizing that the most important thing is to write frequently to develop a habit of writing, and that while poetry need not be factual it must be truthful. Defining for the boys the nuanced difference between "fact" and "truth" in this genre was a fascinating aspect of their presentation.

Tips offered to Saint David's young poets were that it's okay to write "bad" poems, that the trick is to write through them; and that a Spoken Word Poet should ask himself three questions: "What do I want to write about?", "How will I write about it?" and finally, "How will I perform it?"

Following the performance, Sarah and Phil answered questions from the boys and, later, met with sixth graders in their classrooms where they conducted the first of two poetry writing workshops.

Today's special program is an outgrowth of the school's Curriculum Initiative, which expanded the school's creative writing curriculum and the school's ongoing commitment to the development of rhetoric in a variety of forms.

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