DigitalJournal.com Editor Turns Page on Spoken Word

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DigitalJournal.com Managing Editor David Silverberg has recently released his anthology of Canadian spoken word, a first in the country’s publishing industry. Mic Check compiles performance poetry from 15 artists, breathing new life into what many consider a dead art form.

Digital Journal — Poetry is not old news. Just ask DigitalJournal.com’s Managing Editor David Silverberg.

Silverberg has been a long-time DJ staffer but also an avid poetry fan, expert and critic in his spare time. Silverberg is making news now as the editor behind Mic Check: An Anthology of Spoken Word in Canada. Published by small press Quattro Books in Toronto, the slim 100-page anthology gives Canadian spoken word its due according to Silverberg.

Silverberg says Mic Check is Canada’s first anthology of spoken word and he wants people to realize how powerful the art from can be.

“These are brutally honest truths,” Silverberg says, when asked to explain spoken word’s appeal. “They are poems by real people dealing with hardcore situations; they’re not meditations on spring blossoms or the sway of an oak tree. This is as gritty as it gets.”

Spoken word is often referred to as the stage-oriented style of poetry, where artists craft poems for performance instead of for the page. This art form gets the most respect in poetry slams — spoken word competitions that have poets read their works on stage and judges from the audience score each poem between 0 to10. The judges have to base their scoring both on content and performance.

“The slams are where the most powerful poetry hits the ears hardest,” says Silverberg, who is also founder and artistic director of Toronto Poetry Slam.

He likens poetry slams to citizen journalism, in fact. “At a slam, anyone can become a hero one night," Silverberg said. "And it’s not much different with citizen media, which can put a journalist’s story on the front page instantly. Good writing gets rewarded in both citizen journalism and poetry slams.”

As editor of Mic Check, Silverberg admits he had a difficult time selecting the 15 poets he wanted included between the covers. He says there is so much talent in Canada, he had to make some hard decisions on the range of poetry to select. He is happy with the end result because “the book shows what Canadians have to offer in this burgeoning art. Poets touch upon bad break-up to playing Nintendo to child abuse to the struggle of Native Canadians.”

The cities represented in Mic Check include Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Calgary and Montreal. The book will officially launch on Monday April 28 at Cervejaria (842 College) at 7 p.m.

“The publishing world has to wake up to the fact that spoken word is what the kids want to hear, what non-academics want to read,” Silverberg says. “Sure, some people think classic poetry is dead, literary poetry isn’t getting its due, but I think a lot of people clamour to spoken word to check out something different.”

While it could be debated that spoken word is what kids want to hear, Silverberg does have some numbers to back up the claim: His Toronto Poetry Slam attracts 180 attendees per monthly show, and the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word regularly brings in 400 people at its annual event. Not bad for an event that gets no real PR.

In light of performance poetry’s rising popularity, what can Mic Check do to keep that momentum going? Silverberg writes in the book’s prologue:

It’s the intention of Mic Check, as it is the intention of almost every poetry slam and spoken word event in the country, to let a few words spark your curiosity to seek more, to find out what other artists are carving new ground in Canadian poetry.

Mic Check will launch on Monday April 28 at Cervejaria (842 College) at 7 p.m. Performers include Leviathan, White Noise Machine and Valentino Assenza. For more information on Mic Check, check out the Quattro Books website.