Spoken Word

A “rich hybrid of memoir and history” (The New Yorker) of the literary art form that has transformed the cultural landscape, by one of its influential practitioners, an award-winning poet, professor, and slam champion“Bennett…transport[s] us back to the city blocks, bars, cafes and stages these artists traversed and inhabited…an instructive text for young poets, artists or creative entrepreneurs trying to find a way to carve out a space for themselves…Shines with a refreshing dynamism.” —The New York TimesIn 2009, when he was twenty years old, Joshua Bennett was invited to perform a spoken word poem for the Obamas, at the same White House “Poetry Jam” where Lin-Manuel Miranda declaimed the opening bars of a work-in-progress that would soon revolutionize American theater. That meeting is but one among many in the trajectory of Bennett’s young life, as he rode the cresting wave of spoken word through the 2010s. But in this book, he is not a memoirist so much as a partici