Hi, guys!
Thanks for checking out this video.
One of the most common questions that I get asked as a spoken word poet is, "How do you
memorize all that?"
Well, today we're going over just that: My own personal memorization process.
And stick around because at the end of this video I'm going to have one tip that I think
can benefit all spoken word poets.
So thanks for watching, and please let me know what you think in the comments below.
Thanks again for checking this out.
Now, let me offer a disclaimer before I continue: There are no rules when it comes to poetry,
spoken word or otherwise.
There are no rules; there's no right and wrong; there are just guidelines.
So this particular video is going to talk about my own personal memorization process.
One of the first things that I tell people when it comes to memorizing poetry is that
it has a lot to do with how I write it.
I'm going to put this up on the screen so that you can check it out.
The poem that I chose to use for this example is called, "It's Not That Simple," and I'll
leave a link in the description so you can check it out if you'd like.
One of the first things you'll notice upon looking at this poem is that it's broken up
into chunks.
Each separated by these ellipses marks.
The reason for that is that I can make these nice bit-sized chunks, as you can see here
and here.
Now, if we zoom in a little bit here, you'll notice that every line ends with a punctuation
mark, and I do that on purpose, so that the chunks that we've already made I can break
those down even further into individual lines.
Now, once I've gotten it written out, it's all about rote memory at this point.
It's about reading over and over and over and over again.
And let me put it up on the screen so you can check out really quick exactly what I
mean.
Don't worry; it's not as daunting as it sounds.
Now the key here is that I'm going to focus on this line here.
I'm going to forget about all over this.
I do not need it.
I'm going to focus on just this line until I have it memorized and can do it with my
eyes closed.
Then, once I've got this one memorized, then I can move on to the next one.
And, again, forget all about this; I want to focus on this one line.
Keep repeating it until I get it down and can do it with my eyes closed.
And then, once I have this line memorized, then I can go ahead and add it to the first
line.
The key is not to move on to the next line until you have the one before it completely
memorized 100%.
And, again, don't worry about this stuff down here; it's not going to effect you right now.
And then once I have the top two memorized, then I can go ahead and start working on the
third line; memorizing that.
And, again, don't worry about any of the stuff below it or above it; work on memorizing that
specific line.
Now, once I have the third line, then I can go ahead and add it to the two lines that
I've already memorized.
Boom.
Now I have three lines already down; didn't take that long.
By this point, you should have the top two lines memorized.
Do not--and I'll repeat it and I'm sounding like a broken record--DO NOT move on until
you have the previous lines memorized.
Once you have those three lines or those two lines, then focus on memorizing them as a
whole, one after the other.
And just keep repeating those two lines, or those three lines, over and over and over
again until you have them as their own individual memorized chunk.
Hopefully now you can understand what I mean when I say that my own personal memorization
process has a lot to do with how I write it.
And, like I said before, it's not as daunting as it sounds.
We're breaking it up into small, little, digestible chunks.
So you go ahead and repeat that and repeat that and repeat that, and you'll get that
and then add it on to the next; it's just like anything that we've learned in school:
We built a foundation, we built up on top of that.
Just like with that, as far as memorizing my spoken word poetry it's building a foundation
of those first few lines.
Once you get that, then you can start building on top of it.
One of the biggest tips that I can offer to spoken word poets is that they should remember
poetry in general is a display of mastery of the language; SPOKEN WORD poetry is not
only the display of mastery of the language, but mastery of the SPOKEN language.
That's important to remember because what will set you apart from other spoken word
poets is your delivery.
That means your tone of voice, your inflection, your dynamics; everything that you have within
you, you need to bring that out.
If you've ever taken a communication course or speech course, then you'll know that there
is a lot that goes into speaking a language.
There's dynamics, there's tone of voice, there's inflection, there's body language.
All of these different things we, as spoken word poets, we have to master those things
before we go out on that stage.
So, if there's any tip that I can offer to anyone, it's to remember that poetry is the
mastery of the language, spoken word poetry is a mastery of the SPOKEN language.
Think about it, because that means A LOT.
I hope this was informative; I hope that you were able to learn something and take something
away from this video with you.
If you were, please let me know what it was in the comments below.
If you weren't, please let me know what you'd like to see in the next video.
Thanks again for watching; I really appreciate it.