‘The Performance and Perception of Authenticity in Contemporary UK Spoken Word Poetry’ (University of Strathclyde, 2020)

Abstract: Contemporary spoken word poetry events are often described as a platform for ‘authentic’ expression: emotionally charged spaces at which poets viscerally, honestly share their personal experiences directly with the audience. Scholarship into this genre generally concurs that ‘authenticity’ functions as an aesthetic and moral quality within the genre: that poems and poets perceived as ‘authentic’ achieve more success. However, ‘authenticity’ is not a singular, static trait but rather a rapidly evolving, culturally conditional, and subjective process relying on the dialogic exchange of performance and perception. This thesis seeks to clarify the discourse regarding authenticity within contemporary U.K. spoken word poetry by proposing a genre-specific taxonomy of ten strains of authenticity which are commonly performed, framed, and perceived in this sphere. These distinct, though interlacing, strains are the authenticities of origin, autobiographical self, narrative, persona, temporal state, emotion, voice, identity, motivation, and engagement. The thesis draws upon social scientific methodology, including interviews with 70 U.K.-based poets, to examine how each of these strains functions as an aesthetic and moral quality within the genre. It considers how individual poets may perform these authenticities as well as how the conventions of spoken word spaces encourage the perception of poets as ‘real’ people (rather than actors playing characters) sharing autobiographical narratives while fully co-present with their audiences. Ultimately, this thesis emphasises the constructed, subjective nature of authenticity by revealing the extent to which spoken word performances are pre-composed, rehearsed, and otherwise artistically wrought. It concludes by analysing the commonality of descriptions of spoken word poetry as ‘authentic’ in academic scholarship and popular media and argues that this rhetoric is rooted in stereotype and downplays the skill and craft required in this multidisciplinary art form.

My PhD can be read and downloaded with full free public access here.

Spoken Word Interview Archive

There is a serious lack of high-quality, accessible information (i.e. statistics, interviews, scholarship) pertaining to contemporary spoken word poetry in the UK, due in part to the field being relatively new and in part to its often grassroots nature and thus the lack of sustained institutional and/or commercial funding. Because of this gap in the research, I realised early in my PhD that I would need to collect my own primary data.

In early 2017 I received ethics approval from the University of Strathclyde to conduct a large-scale series of oral history methodology interviews with figures in the spoken word scene across the UK. I conducted 70 face-to-face interviews from May-November 2017 with spoken word artists, producers, and event organisers in all four countries of the UK. These interviews averaged an hour and half, for a total of over 100 hours of audio.

These audio interviews and their transcripts will be soon archived at the Scottish Oral History Centre in Glasgow, where they will be fully accessible to the public (except in cases where the interviewee wishes more limited access). Because I was aware that these interviews would be a public resource, I asked interviewees not only the questions that directly addressed my research questions but also those that I predicted would be helpful for researchers in the future (such as general queries regarding the history and demographics of interviewee’s local scenes). It is my hope that this archive will be a useful resource not only for other researchers interested in this field now and in the future, but for spoken word artists and organisers themselves curious about their peers’ perspectives on their craft.

As of early 2023 I am working with the Scottish Oral History Centre to establish this archive. I will update this page and post as soon as the archive becomes public.