On My Tryst With Public Speaking and Spoken Word Poetry

Public speaking.

Those two words are ones that always terrify me and excite me at the same time.

I won't say that I'm one of the best public speakers out there. I have a tendency to go a little too fast and sometimes, I forget to maintain eye contact with the audience. Moreover, my lean built and my soft voice aren't really advantageous for me to come off as an imposing Julius Caeser-type orator, to be honest. 

To cap it off, it is a truly nerve-wracking experience to actually go up on the stage and stare back at people who potentially would be judging me if I messed up. As much as I like to pretend that I am a jaded human being who doesn't give a damn about what people think of her, in moments like these, even I get terrified - because there are going to be many people judging me at the same time! 

Yet, I have always loved doing it, even though I am not the best speaker out there. To research endlessly over the topic I've been assigned, type out the speech on my Microsoft Word doc and practice over and over and over (and recording myself while I'm practicing - so as to check if I'm doing a decent job) is something that I truly enjoy. Even the actual going to the stage and speaking aloud bit, I truly enjoy a lot.  (After I've overcome the overwhelming sensation of throwing up, that is)

It was ultimately this love for public speaking which ultimately made me experiment a lot in my undergrad and my fellowship programme. 

In my undergrad, I participated extensively in elocution competitions (was moderately okay at them), dabbled in debates for a bit (I suck at debates - unless its text debating or when I am super pissed off - during those times, I suddenly transform into an aggressive pitbull and I refuse to back off) and I also experimented a bit by being a part of this Youth Parliament competition where I only had one dialogue to parrot off. 

I wouldn't say I wowed the audiences with my unquestionable content, my formidable aura or my Oxfordian accent. I mean, my content was pretty good, because my perfectionist Virgo tendencies made me cross-verify a lot of factoids. My aura wasn't formidable because for some inexplicable reason, I'd end up laughing till the sides of my stomach ached if I tried to be something I evidently wasn't. Though I was from a pretty decent private school, my accent wasn't Oxfordian - it was pretty much an Indian accent which had faint Malayali drawls and fainter traces of Marathi intonations.

But suffice to say, the experience of pushing myself out of my comfort zone really did make me learn a lot. To be on the stage actually instilled a sense of self-confidence and worth in me which was sorely lacking before. It helped me understand what I was capable of and how I shouldn't listen to detractors. 

Like, for instance, there were quite a people who kept telling me, "Oh no, darling. You're not cut out for public speaking. You suck at it." and there were some who treated me all patronizingly when I stood up alongside them, teamed up with my novice against their years of experience. However, me being the stubborn little mule that I always have been, didn't exactly listen to them and only took constructive criticism instead. 

Once I was done with my undergrad and had morphed into a moderate public speaker who wouldn't have the urge to barf a thousand times before she spoke in public, I went directly for my post graduate fellowship programme (AKA the chief reason why I did not update this blog for a VERY long time) 

I think I've mentioned it a couple of times before how it was a truly (touch wood) transformative experience and how it taught me a lot of things. With regards to public speaking, it taught me how to be a more spontaneous public speaker through the countless presentation projects we had and at the same time, it taught me how to be a tad less... 

Judgmental  

How, you may ask. 

Spoken Word Poetry. 

***

Now if you're someone who knows me well and who has read this blog, you might get the impression that I'm quite opinionated as a person. Everyone judges mentally, but I being the chatterbox, can't-control-my-tongue idiot that I am, express my judgments quite openly. Whatever I see, I say it out loud frankly - most of the times I'm quite harmless, but at times I can be a bit harsh. 

Because of my nature, it makes it very difficult for me to accept things which are a bit on the pretentious end. Like spoken word poetry for instance.

For those who don't know, spoken word poetry is a form of performance, wherein a person (or a couple of people) come on stage and act out their poetry with gestures and incredible voice modulation. If done well, it can be very powerful and moving. If not done well, it can be the ultimate act of pretentiousness. 

Though I have admired a lot of poets like Rabia Kapoor and Kamala Das for being so sure of themselves with their poetry, I have often cringed at a bunch of  spoken word poets that happen in our present day 21st century. For some inexplicable reason, my mouth twitched into a smile (not unlike my maternal grandmother), when I see someone boldly come up on stage and sing out their poetry out loud. 

One minute, I'd be calm, staring at them as blankly as the rest of the audience. The next minute, when I saw them speak their poetry out loud, in accents which are completely different (?) from their normal voices, I had to literally stop myself from giggling like my soon-to-be-six-year-old cousin and bite my lower lip because I simply couldn't take the pretentiousness of it all.

(Moreover, the fact that I came across spoken word poets who spoke at times as if they had an asthma attack midway through their long, dramatic pauses didn't exactly leave a great impression either) 

But all that changed when I went for the first ice-breaker open mic organized at the start of my fellowship programme. 

Though I was wracked with a severe bout of impostor syndrome after meeting so many inspiring people, I thought I should recite one of my poems because hey, it's a great chance for me to speak publicly. So I ended up picking up one of the poems I'd written on Wattpad for someone whose behaviour (till date) confused me, and thought, hey, reading my poem aloud would be an interesting public speaking experiment. 

Yet, as I sat down on the bleachers with my new friends and saw as each of my classmate gave one stellar performance after the other, I blanched. 

There were phenomenal dancers, rivaling Madhuri Dixit. There were brilliant singers, who could give Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran a run for their money. And then there were spoken word poets... 

Who came on stage, eyed everyone confidently and spoke their poetry out loud - complete with dramatic gestures and words that could bring an entire country down to its knees (is it a Meg Cabot quote?). 

They weren't just good. They weren't just great. 

They were otherworldly.  

And here I was, a girl who spoke with a monotone and whose body-language while speaking publicly gave the impression that she'd been Petrificus Totallus'ed. 

At that moment, I legitimately felt like to be Petrificus Totallus'ed would have been a far easier fate than embarrassing myself in front of everyone. 

I couldn't, I legit couldn't match up to these stalwarts! And at that moment, I realized that spoken word poetry definitely wasn't easy or something to be made fun of. 

It was a difficult, DIFFICULT ART that I evidently wasn't equipped for. 

Though it wasn't a competition, but who would even bother to hear my borderline-hormonal-teenager-esque poem in comparison to the deep content that had been presented right before mine? 

"I don't want to do it." I said suddenly, completely gripped with panic. 

"Shut up, of course you're going!" Everyone - from my newfound friends to the absolutely angelic program coordinator - said. 

And reluctantly, bracing myself for a death from embarrassment, I went. 

When I sank down on the chair in front of the microphone, I looked, tongue tied at everyone, and I said quite frankly, "I have never done this before. So please bear with me." 

And please don't throw tomatoes at me... I might have added privately - or did I say that aloud? 

(For someone who does get nervous, I sure had a hell lot of confidence to actually admit that I was nervous)

And then, slowly, taking deep breaths, staring at all the utterly accomplished people around me, I started reciting my poem. I tried to say it as if I was actually asking the person who I had written it for - you know, trying to modulate it a bit and I really tried looking at everyone in the eye. And once I was done, I got a very encouraging round of applause. 

I mean, I know it I wasn't pretty good in comparison to the rest. But the fact that everyone was so supportive even after the whole thing was done somehow empowered me to try out more. 

Since then, I took part in two open mic events for spoken word poetry. I don't know if I'm good, but I feel like I have improved since the first time I tried it out. 

All in all, that entire episode made me realize how spoken word poetry is something that you can't arbitrarily brush off as the ultimate paragon of pretentiousness. Poetry as a medium of expression is pretty difficult, to begin with. To express that verbally in front of many people and to make them understand it through evocative verbs is a skill that very few have. And that HAS to be appreciated, no matter what.

That's all for now. 

Stay awesome as ever,

Much love, 

Archie <3