“What exactly is spoken word?”

I’ve had a fair few people ask me that recently. “Are you basically just saying ‘spoken word’ because it sounds cooler than poetry?” To be fair, I don’t shy away from the term “poet,” and I definitely write poems as opposed to spoken-word pieces — but either way, I still see a very important distinction between poetry and spoken word.

To me, spoken word is Linton Kwesi Johnson staring straight down the camera as he recites Inglan Is A Bitch. It’s John Cooper Clarke being gobbed on by punks in 1979. It’s Kate Tempest reducing people to tears in the Poetry&Words tent at Glastonbury in 2013. Attila The Stockbroker talking about the transformation of his relationship with his stepdad. The very first time I heard The Streets, when I chanced upon Weak Become Heroes on one of the MTV channels at the age of 13, had my mind completely blown. And so on and so forth.