Random Urban Static: Spoken Word Poetry Power

The most talented spoken word artists, or "rhymecologists," proffer clever, vocabulary acrobatics as observations about the way we live in the world. They spit unexpected couplings, laying them down, end to end, from the beginning to the send. They lay bare naked truth for you to hear and see and feel.

The tightest lyrics provoke thought, pain and laughter. And when the performance is over your mind and heart are worked out from riding the gymnastic gyrations of verbal uneven parallel bars.


'GV7 Random Urban Static' is a documentary I watched over the past few nights. It sits you down, up close and personal with 15 spoken word artists and lets you listen and watch as they open up about the creative process and what compels them to rhyme.



It's a sincere chronicle. But the most engaging moments of the film feature the artists themselves reciting their work. Hearing artists talk about art or the "artistic process" narrows the power of the rhymes for me. Because the more I hear about the artist's personal story, and about his or her own conflicted inner dialogue, the more I am taken out of the moment and have straggling remnants of back story floating around in my head as I watch them perform.

Not a big deal. After five minutes of Bridget Gray, I am transported right back to all the possibility of verbal creativity.