Three questions for James Tokley
Tampa’s inaugural poet laureate has been spittin’ poetry in the bay area since 1978. Now he schools us on the past, present and future of the spoken-word art form.
How is spoken word different than other types of poetry?
Poetry has since its origin, its naissance, been spoken. You go back to the poetry of David when he was singing at Saul’s court — that’s where the lyric poetry comes from. People have recently found out that the poetry of the great Walt Whitman is best served not cool but hot. If you really want to hear Walt Whitman, you have to give his poetry to a Baptist or a Pentecostal preacher. Langston Hughes’ poetry is not good served cold. Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poetry — most of it in what they call black dialect, Negro dialect — is best heard spoken. Of course then there’s Dylan Thomas and there’s Wordsworth and others, but even their poetry sounds good spoken on a balmy day.
Why is poetry so sexy now?
Rap has had a lot to do with it...
How do you differentiate between rap and spoken word, or would you say they’re one in the same?
It’s one in the same. Everything has its nuance. Everything has a genre, and the historians and the poetry critics of course will pick the bones of rap in years to come and be able to differentiate between rap and free verse and onomatopoeia. (laughs) I can tell you this, rap poetry is the poetry of the people.
