On the Road to Democracy:

Spoken Word Poetry Poeticizing the Revolution

Maha El Said
Cairo University

(If people one day demand life/ fate will surely consent
Darkness of the night will disappear/ and bondages will all break)Abi Kasim el Shabie 1
These lines, from the Tunisian poet Abi Kasim el Shabies Demand of Life, were written in
1933 and have become very popular during the Arab Spring. They were chanted in the streets of
Tunisia, echoed on the streets of Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain and Syria. Shabies verse inspired and
fueled the revolutions across the Arab world, giving people the power to persist, as they believed that
Fate will surely consent. With the Arab Spring, life was not only given to the people; life was also
given to poetry. Just as Shabies verse did, poetry became alive in the streets expressing peoples
frustration and hopes and sustaining their resistance, extending the revolution from only a political
demand for freedom to a revolution in culture and poetry; reminding us of what Patricia Volk has said
about poetry at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe: The word is so good, it reminds you that no matter how
bizarre life gets you need poetry. 2
Concerns about the use of poetry and its importance have been addressed throughout the ages in
numerous essays written in defense of poetry. Most critics argue that confining poetry to academia
has taken away life from it, replacing it with more popular forms of entertainment such as novels, soap
operas and movies. As Dana Gioia notes, poetry now belongs to a subculture. No longer part of
mainstream of artistic and intellectual life, it has become the specialized occupation of a relatively
small and isolated group. 3
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I argue that spoken-word poetry takes away the elitist state of poetry and replaces it with
popular opinion, bringing poetry down from the ivory tower of academia into the streets. Furthermore,
the communal and interactive nature of spoken word makes it a powerful political and revolutionary
tool that has been put to use by the oppressed, making the poet the spokesperson for his or her
community. This paper aims to show how the revolutionary nature of spoken word has lent itself to
revolutionary causes in both the American and Egyptian contexts.

Spoken Word: The Art of Opposition:

Billy Collins, poet laureate of the United States from 1112 to 1113, said:
To hear a poem is to experience its momentary escape from the prison cell of the page,
where silence is enforced, to a freedom dependent only on the ability to open the mouth
that most democratic of instruments and speak. 4
The orality of poetry is nothing new; it has always been an oral art, as Joan Houlihan notes:
before writing was invented, poetry was used to mark special occasions and strong emotions and to
burn the necessary storiesthe myths and truths of a cultureinto the memories of the people.5
However, with literacy and the advent of different technologies, the word has been imprisoned on the
page, or the screen for that matter, diminishing its dialogical quality and restraining the interaction
between poet and audience. 6
The 1990s saw a resurgence of oral poetry that is manifested in what has come to be known as
the spoken-word revolution. Bob Holman, one of the most active poets on the scene of spoken-word
poetry says: Poetry has found a way to drill the wax that had been collecting for decades! Poetry is no
longer an exhibit in a Dust Museum. Poetry is alive; poetry is allowed. 7 Not only that, but poetry has
become cool and representative, not only of and for white middle class, but has been embraced by
youths and minorities of all colors. The new oral poetry, with hip-hop as its cultural thought line, gives
2

voice to the multiple voiceless, making it another form of rap that popular culture cherishes. The
mushrooming of poetry slams in the United States are reminiscent of how Dylan Thomas in the 1950s,
and Bob Dylan afterwards, became popular phenomenon in America.
Spoken-word poetry is also revolutionary in nature: Although it shares many characteristics
with oral poetry, it springs from a different thought process that has been restructured by the
introduction of writing. The whole concept of emphasizing orality in a literacy-based society is in itself
revolutionary. Therefore, the dependence of the Beat Generation, the Black Arts Movement (BAM), or
the Last Poets on spoken word and performance poetry as an expression of opposition is befitting.
Spoken-word poetry is the art of resistance as it challenges authority in all its forms it challenges
notions of form, notions of authorship, notions of access, and notions of language. In sum, it challenges
the hegemony: when poetry averts conformity it enters into the contemporary: speaking to the
pressures and conflicts of the moment. 8
It was the Beats who really made use of poetry as a revolutionary weapon. The Beats were a
non-conformist community of writers and poets who became famous in the post-World War II years.
Beat poetry was protest poetry that was used for railing against the war, academic world, and society's
norms, thus creating a counter-culture. Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and others
represent the generation that was beat by the political and riotous changes of their times of atomic
bombs, cold war and McCarthyism. 9
Ginsbergs Howl, was written not to be published, and was only published after it was
performed. 10 It has been described as a piece that broke all the rules of propriety, convention and good
manners, and changed the face of poetry forever.11 Beat poetry was underground poetry that utilized
the characteristics of oral poetry as "pro-attestation, that is testimony in favor of Value."12 Marilyn
Coffey describes her experience listening to Ginsbergs Howl by saying:
The opening lines of Ginsberg's "Howl" exploded in my brain like a fireball
3

The ensuing lines begat a kind of terror in me, as I fell further under the spell of
Ginsberg's chanting, his rhythmic repetitions. This reading was like listening to music,
utterly satisfying on some sensual level. By the last refrain, I was mesmerized. I
didn't know who Carl Solomon was to him, but on some other, deeper level, I knew! I
knew! The electricity flowed to me; I was dazzled. 13
The power and impact of performance is obvious, enforcing Michael McClures impressions of the
night of the reading of Howl in 2955, as he watched the audience cheering Ginsberg as the
manifestation of liberation; they all knew that, at the deepest level a barrier had been broken, that a
human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America and its supporting armies and
navies and academies and institutions and ownership systems and power-support bases."14 Spoken
word is the poetry of power, the power of multiple voices, and the power of the people. As Catharine
Bowman argues: to hear a poem leads to experiencing the poem in a different way, it gives space for
experiencing the physicality of a poem.15
While white male artists could afford to get caught up in linguistic and artistic phenomena, such
as art for arts sake or language poetry, the use of art for blacks was more functional. As Ron
Karenga puts it, Black Art must be for the people, by the people and from the people. That is to say, it
must be functional, collective and committing. 16He continues: Our creative motif must be revolution;
all art that does not discuss or contribute to revolutionary change is invalid. The black artist had to
realize that the question of black survival was at the core of his art. Therefore, orally performed poetry,
with its soul-charged form and conventions that amplify the emotion, seems to lend itself as an
appropriate tool for creating a black society and black art.
African Americans have always combined strong oral and musical traditions with call-andresponse methods of communication to provide a genesis for contemporary African-American poetry.
BAM, with poets such as Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Ismael Reed, Quincy Troupe and Sonia

Sanchez all were, and still are, involved in performance poetry, writing and performing poems that
kill: Baraka defines the characteristics of performance poetry in his poem Black Art":
We want "poems that kill."
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
Guns...17
Making use of black culture and black vernacular, BAM poetry is poetry that every black person can
feel, understand, and identify with. It is political as it strives to create a black world in black language
and sounds. BAM poetry is performance poetry utilizing the sounds and music of black people, making
jazz and the sounds of jazz central to it. Thus, Baraka ends his poem with a call for the creation of a
black poem. And a/Black World, which can only be achieved by the combination of sound and action
to perform the world as a Black Poem. Barak calls on black people to speak as a means of
resistance to white hegemony. He says:
We want a black poem. And a
Black World.
Let the world be a Black Poem
And Let All Black People Speak This Poem
Silently

or LOUD. 18
The Egyptian Context:
Like the American spoken-word movement , Egypt witnessed the rise of opposition poetry in
spoken word, the most eminent example of which is Ahmed Fouad Nigm. As Randa Abubakr puts it:
Nigm subscribes to the long tradition of Egyptian colloquial poetry which is informed by, on the one
hand, the poets awareness of political and social issues, and on the other, his/ her proximity to the
5

people.19 He, like Baraka, used concrete images in his poems so that his [listeners] would
recognize themselves and be inspired to revolt against their circumstances.20 Nigm says:
Who are they and who are we?
They are the kings and princes
Money and power is their own
We are the deprived poor.
Now think awhile
Have a wild guess
Who is really in control?! 21
Here, Nigm is not only expressing popular feelings in showing the discrepancy between the rich and
the poor, he is creating poems like those Baraka called for, poems like fists beating niggers out of
Jocks.22 Nigm provokes action and empowers the poor through the satirical tone of his rhetorical
question: Who is really in control?!
Another example is People of Egypt Fast Asleep, where Ngim calls people to action and not
any action, but revolutionary action; he says:
Oh people of Egypt fast asleep
Why dont you wake up and see the day
The Revolution has started in Khartoum
And you are sleeping tight at home
Shoukaa bouaka ya deil el far 23
Again, just as Baraka uses the language of the black community, Nigm uses colloquial Arabic
vernacular, the language in which the regular man thinks, dreams, and talks. This poem does not only
express opposition and call for revolution, but it also democratizes the revolution, making it accessible
to all. As Abubakr explains: the use of the Egyptian colloquial dialect in literature, with its mixture of
6

jokes, obscenities, buffoonery, and the nonsensical, is part of a carnivalesque world that announces a
rebellion against, and a break from, dominant values, both cultural and literary, and, I would add,
political. 24 Therefore, when Nigm calls for revolution, he presents it in the frame of childrens games,
using shoukaa boukaa , a nonsensical phrase that is used in childrens games to jinx the opponent
using, witchcraft like, spell words like ya deil el far (rats tail); Nigm, therefore, empowers the weak
by mocking the powerful.
Nigms poetry was never part of mainstream Egyptian poetry; it has always been the expression
of the oppressed majority, and it was against the state. Nigms poems, with their obvious bias for the
weak and poor, gained a popularity that is rare to many other poems. As Haifaa Khalafallah justly
notes: banned poets [in the Middle East] are producing abundantly on tapes and developing a new
form of linguistic and stylistic expression.25 This new form of expression can only be transmitted
through spoken word.
The Spoken Word Revolution:
Depending on the techniques of orality, a new generation of poets have carved their space in the
American literary scene and created the spoken-word revolution: "The philosophy and purpose has
always been to reveal poetry as a living art It's about getting people excited, about what you say and
how you say it.26 The spoken-word poetry movement that stared in the 1990s in the United States has
a rough-edged, populist attitude, [was] intent on spreading the word of all poetry, and [carried] a
democratizing energy."27 Spoken word became the venue for all the oppressed, defying censorship and
marginalization; poets of all colors were given voice through this form of poetry. Spoken word created
a space for resistance and assertion; tackling taboos and exposing discrimination and oppression,
spoken-word poets not only democratized poetry by giving it back to the people but realized the
democracy of voice. Issues of color, sex, class, and identity became a subject for poetry. Giving voice
to the voiceless and the marginalized, spoken word started to flourish, as poetry slams, poetry cafes,
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MTV poetry shows, and finally Russell Simmonss HBO Def Poetry Jam became popular, making
poetry part of popular culture.
The spoken-word revolution did not travel across the Atlantic; the poetry scene was very
different in the 1990s in Egypt. Poetry remained the possession of the elite, whether those who thrived
in the academy or the closed circles of a few enthusiastic young. In a country where illiteracy remains
high, at around 40% of the population, poetry becomes a stale product that no one knows or even hears
about.28 Instead, song lyrics have declined into superficial, and, I dare say, vulgar stances confining the
imagination to the bedroom. Models in video clips have replaced the orator, as words lose importance
and become secondary to image, not only alienating the popular imagination from poetry but defining a
general taste that is repugnant . However, with the January 25th revolution in Egypt, a new interest in
the genuine and real was created. Poetry and song created a space for resistance and assertion, as poems
inspired and documented the revolution. Tahrir Square became an embodiment of Michael Foucaults
heterotopia: a non-hegemonic space. A space of otherness, where all the people who have been
othered and oppressed can come together, forming a solidarity that can only be attained through art.29
Before the Egyptian revolution, there were a few examples of spoken-word and performance
poetry, championed by figures like Iman Bakry and Hisham el Gokh. Lu Xun, a Chinese writer, sees a
direct relation between revolution and literature, the beginning of which is considered the build-up
towards the revolution, when literature expresses dissatisfaction and distress over social conditions,
voicing suffering and indignation.30 Bakrys most famous "Kolena benhibak ya homar" (We All
Love You, Ass), with its puns and sarcastic overtones, started a new awareness of spoken word as a
means of resistance:
They say a singer is singing I love you ass
This guy is a climber , liar, and a hypocrite too
Why should he only love you
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We all love you ass

That is because youre really understanding
Walking all over us not understanding
You avoid any negotiations with stupid determination and insistence
I love you Ass31
Like Nigm, Bakry uses Egyptian colloquial Arabic in hyperbolic mockery to criticize the
political situation. Yet unlike other poets, whether in the United States or Egypt, Bakry is more
reserved, alluding to things rather than directly attacking them. Most of her spoken-word poems depend
on wordplay and allegory such as El Deek Da Toure. Literally translated, the title would read as
This Rooster Is a Bull; however, when read out loud, the title is heard as el dic da tor, or the
dictator.32 Bakry depends on the articulation and performance of the poem to get her meaning across.
Therefore, most of her political and critical poems are written to be performed rather than read , which
shields the poet from censorship and maybe even arrest.
Another poet who brought poetry to the streets of Egypt is Hisham el Gokh. El Gokh performed
poems that touched and reflected the frustrations and disillusionment of Arab youth, promoting a dream
of democracy and pride, he gained a popularity that was rare for a poet in contemporary Egypt:
Its an awful feeling to feel your country is weak
Your voice is weak
Your opinion is weak

We have no pride
And eat our bread with insult

Why should I minding my business get arrested

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Why should I go to jail for four years temporary detention33

Exposing the evils of poverty, discrimination, and humiliation, the poem becomes a manifesto that
enumerates the reasons why the revolution is inevitable; el Gokh ultimately demands bread, freedom,
and social justice, the demands of the people during the revolution. Rooting his poem in Egyptian folk
tales, el Gokh makes bitter political and socio-economic statements by voicing personal, social and
collective concerns. He deconstructs the status quo as a means for the subversion of the oppressive
system. According to Sally Potter, live performance always possess a subversive and threatening
quality real physical presence exerts a counter power.34 El Gokhs use of folklore, contrary to its
original use, which often involve a sentimental and glamourizing admiration, reflects the
dissatisfaction of the current state of the world and a deep yearning for something other.35
Spoken word introduces an ironic disturbance, as it disrupts the usual business cannot go on
as usual. The use of satire and parody are common in spoken word as a means of resistance. As Simon
Weaver argues: the humour of reverse discourse is significant in relation to racism because it forms a
type of resistance that can, first, act rhetorically against racist meaning and so attack racist truth claims
and points of ambivalence.36 Therefore, when Baue Sia member of two national poetry slam teams
and Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam shows makes fun of Asians and Asian Americans, he is using a
reversed discourse as a means of resistance. Asian Invasion is a typical example of this as Sia
challenges the stereotypes:
I dont mean to seem an uppity
But Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon
Was not a one shot love
Its the precursor of whats to come
Shifting his tone to imitate a silly while girl he goes on:

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Oh these cool Asian people, as long as its Asian on the big screen,
and its in Asia, and its a long time ago, and they are speaking Asian,
and they are kissing other Asians, I have nothing to worry about. Right?
Shifting back to the confrontational tone he shouts:
WRONG MOTHER FUCKER
Were not just on the big screen, in kung Fu fights
Were everywhere
Were prorating your websites
Making your executives look smart
And getting into your schools for free 37
Sias performance style is particularly humorous, as he affirms his Asian-American identity through the
parody of social clichs that haunt this identity.38 Similarly, Amr Atamish, the Egyptian poet who
advocated and revived El Halamantishy poetry an old Arabic form of poetic parody where famous
classical poems are parodied to express dissent with his performance style mimics traditional verse
form only to deconstruct the status quo:
They said that Im a punk
that knows nothing but funk
My learning is limited to Yahoo Chat and Facebook
My pants are hanging low just like a true hip
I say hi and follow up with Thanks or Man peace
Spit gel over my hair, or hold it with hair clips
With a confrontational shift of tone, Atamish defies all the typecasts that have been imposed on his
generation :
I accept all your insult and accept being called punk
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But I want you to remember

A SCREAM FROM THIS PUNK OVERTHREW THE GOVERNMENT

AND THE PRESIDENT FELL!39
Mixing classical Arabic, slang, and English, Atamish is releasing or activating the collision of
vernacular and elitist cultural expressions, resonance which undermine that hegemonys efficacy as a
stable equilibrium in which the power of the elite culture seems natural.40 Winning first prize in the
Arabs Got Talent show, to my mind, was not only the debut of Atamish, but a debut of spoken-word
poetry as an expression of a generation.
Poeticizing the Revolution:
With the Egyptian revolution and the revival of poetry, there was a rise of what Antonio
Gramsci calls organic intellectuals, those who articulate [the] needs and aspirations which have
frequently gone unexpressed as they bring to the public speech what has not been officially
recognized.41 Some of the best Egyptian poems were being performed and received in Tahrir Square
to support the revolution as poets joined the masses in conceiving of a better world. Poetry, and
especially spoken-word poetry, became popular; poetry performances became main events as poets like
Ahmed Haddad and The Street Troop took prominence, bringing old and new underground poetry to
the mainstream by literally performing it on the streets of Cairo. Their presence was, and still is, an
inspiration to all those still sitting in Tahrir. Amin Haddads poem, We Are Coming Back is an
example of how this poetry fuels the revolution:
We are coming back .We are coming back
With a new heart we are coming back
We are coming back from the past moving towards the future
Determined to make the world a better place
12

Life- freedom- Egyptian soul -Bread water and salt

We have said our word and the world listens
People come together fill the air with zeal. Fill life with passion 42

The emotional rapport that is created between the poet and the audience is a powerful tool of spoken
word, because poetry voices both the poets and the audiences concerns. As Walter Ong has pointed
out, all sound and especially oral utterances is dynamic. Therefore, spoken word becomes an
adequate tool to move people and entice them to action. 43 Furthermore, public space is used to bring
political messages to a broader audience and instigate a tension in the social body that disrupts the
smooth structure of authority[creating] interventions, ruptures in the conditions of reproduction of
dominance.44
Poets from all generations became popular and instead of the commercial video clips, TV
channels were showing poetry recitations and revolutionary songs. Poetry video clips were being made
and being shown regularly on TV. The Story of the Revolution, a poem by Ahmed Haddad, is
especially interesting because, in spite of it being made for television, the poem attacks the media and
the role television played during the revolution. The deceptive media is a common theme that runs
through most of spoken-word poetry: Spoken word tells a different story than that being promoted in
the media; it tells the truth to confront the distortions presented on TV. Spoken word calls for action
mostly revolutionary action in contrast to the pacifying messages people are bombarded with on TV.
In this capacity, spoken word becomes the peoples voice, an alternative media that exposes the truth,
realizing Chuck Ds famous words: Rap is CNN for black people.45
Zuccotti Park, like Tahrir Square, became a heterotopia hosting the Poetry Assembly where,
as Ngoma Hill puts it, poetry by the people from the people to the people in the peoples struggle
for change.46 Spoken word was also alive during the Occupy movement; Travis Holloway states:
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Poetry in New York City has often found itself at the intersection of underground performance culture
and major social and political movements.47 The Occupy movement has created a poetry collective
that echoes, and is being echoed, globally, as members perform democracy and call for the three
demands of the Egyptian revolution dignity, freedom and bread. Though members of the Occupy
movement from all over the US posted their work on the web, in solidarity with one another, poetry
performances had a different impact. As Ong states:
because of its physical constitution as sound the spoken word forms human beings in
close- knit groups. When the speaker is addressing an audience, the members of the
audience normally become a unity, with themselves and with the speaker The
interiorizing force of the oral word relates in a special way to the sacral, to ultimate
concerns of existence. 48
A new form of poetry was taking shape in Zuccotti Park, where poets of all ages and colors were
performing their poetry with the choral repetition of the crowd. Spoken word, with all of its
characteristics, lends itself to political poetry. With its roots in the oral tradition, the performance aspect
of the poem becomes important. As Ruth Finnegan argues, the circumstances of the performed piece
this is not a secondary or peripheral matter, but integral to the identity of the poem as actually
realized.49
To my mind, spoken-word poetry was epitomized by the regular people in Tahrir Square and
Zuccotti Park; simple people threaded slogans in iambic pentameter to express their fears, their hopes
and their needs, and this form of poetry cannot be less important than poems written in books kept on
shelves collecting dust. As Marvin Carlson notes: Performance is no longer created by someone for
someone, but it is the expression of a plurivocal world of communicating bodies. 50 Therefore, the
scene of a simple woman creating a rhapsody of political verse in Tahrir Square, or the fourteen-yearold poet, whose poem 99% is anthologized in the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology is actually
14

oral literature in its purest form: What can be more democratic than this? Every poet becomes a star
bard, as spoken word is the poetry of power, the power of multiple voices, the power of the people.
If revolutions are a call for equality and democracy, spoken-word poetry is assumed to be the
possession of the people it is the wisdom of the people, its the peoples knowledge [making it] a
democratic art in the true sense of the word.51 Therefore, the revolution did not only give life to
poetry, but it also brought poetry back to the people. Spoken word is essentially a poetry of dissent that
has a communal element to it: it expresses peoples needs in a language and a rhythm of their own,
paving the way to democracy.
1 Abi Kasim El Shabi, Demand of Life () 1933.
2

Patricia Volk, quoted in Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Caf, ed. Miguel Algarin and Bob Holman (New York:
Henry Holt, 1994), 9.
3

Dana Gioia, "Can Poetry Matter?" Atlantic Monthly (May 1991): 94.
Billy Collins, "Poems on the Page, Poems in the Air," in The Spoken Word Revolution, ed. Mark Eleveld and Marc Smith
(Naperville: Sourcebooks Inc., 2003), 3-5.

Joan Houlihan, "On the Prosing of Poetry, " Boston Comment (2000), http://www.bostoncomment.com/bostonc1.htm
For Bakhtin the novel as a genre is superior to poetry, as it incorporates dialogical quality as a principle of structure: where
every utterance anticipates an implied response and is in dialogue with utterances that have already been made in a social
context. (see Discourse in The Novel. In . Vincent B. Leitch (Ed.), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Critcism (pp. 1190
- 1220). New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.)
6

Bob Holman, Congratulations. You have Found. The Hidden Book. in Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Caf,
ed.Miguel Algarin and Bob Holman ( New York: Henry Holt, 1994), 1-2.
8
Charles Bernstein, State of the Art, A Poetics, (Harvard University Press, 1992) 2
9
The word "beat" was primarily in use after World War II by jazz musicians and hustlers as a slang term meaning down and
out, or poor and exhausted ( quoted in The Spirit of Bohemia, a Vintage Venus portal site specializing
in bohemian culture from the early 19th century to the 1960s
http://www.vintagevenus.com.au/bohemia/eblinks/spirboho/modern/beat/beat.htm )
7

10

The first reading of Howl was on October 7, 1955 at the Six Gallery, a cooperative art gallery in San Francisco.

11

Marilyn Taylor, "12 Pitfalls of Protest Poetry," Writers Magazine (June 2009),
http://www.writermag.com/sitecore/content/Magazine%20Issues/2009/June%202009.aspx.
12

Stephen Prothero, "On the Holy Road: The Beat Movement as Spiritual Protest," The Harvard Theological Review Vol.
84, No. 2 (1991): 207.
13

Marilyn Coffey, "Those Beats!" Social Text No. 9/21, The 61s without Apology (Spring Summer, 1984) 241.

14

Michael McClure, "On 'Howl,'" in Scratching the Beat Surface (San Francisco: North Point, 1982), 15.

15

Catherine Bowman. Word of Mouth: Poems Featured on NPR's All Things Considered (New York: Vintage, 2003): xiv.

16

Ron Karenga, Black Theater , in Modern American Poetry http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/blackarts/documents.htm

(accessed Feb. 6, 2012)
17

Amiri Baraka, Black Art, 2966

15

18

Ibid

Randa Abu Bakr, The Political Prisoner as Antihero: The Prison Poetry of Wole Soyinka and Ahmad Fuad Nigm,
Comparative Literature Studies 46, no. 2 (Jun 2009), 261-286.

19

20

William J. Harris. The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri Baraka: The Jazz Aesthetic (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri
Press, 1985).
21
Ahmed Fouad Nigm ( Who are they and Who are We)http://chaykh.imam.free.fr/hommamin.html
22

Baraka, Black Art.

Nigm ( Shouka BouKa), in

http://www.dhfaf.com/poetry.php?name=Diwan&op=shqas&poemsid=99
23

24

Abu Bakr, 282.

25

Haifaa Khalafallah, "The Unofficial Cassette Culture in the Middle East," Index on Censorship 11, no. 5 (1982): 10-12.
Spoken Word Movement ) Email communication between Bob Hollman and Mark
Miazga(https://www.msu.edu/~miazgama/spokenword.htm
27
Miguel Algarin, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Caf( New York: Henry Holt, 1994), 9.
28
Based on the 2011 United Nations Development Program 2011 report.

26

29

Michael Foucault, Of Other Spaces, trans. Jay Miskowiec, Diacritus 16 (Spring 1986): 24.

Lu Xun, Literature of a Revolutionary Period, Chinese Literature no. 9 (1977): 3-9, in Lu Xun Reference Archive,
Marxists Internet Archive (2005) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lu-xun/1927/04/08.htm.
31
Iman Bakry, Kuolana benheibak ya Homar (I Love You Ass), YouTube video, 2:41, posted by shikopasha, May 6,
2008,http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xftbPF93j3I.
32
Bakry, El Deek Da Toure, YouTube video, 1:12, from Shababbeek Program-Dream T.V, posted by PinkKittyy, Jan 23,
2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E9uwzgiT1Y.
33
Hisham el Gokh , Goha Hisham el Gokh , Goha YouTube video , 24:51, posted by by lifessa, Nov 29, 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UL27jVymklmtU&feature=player_detailpage&v=27jVymklmtU
30

34

Sally Potter, quoted in Marvin Carlson. Performance: A Critical Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 1996),
170.
35
Ruth Finnegan. Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance, and Social Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1977), 33.
Simon Weaver, "The Other Laughs Back: Humour and Resistance in Anti-racist Comedy," Sociology 44, no. 1
(February 2010): 31-48.
37
Beau Sia, The Asian Invasion, YouTube video, 3:11 , from a performance on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, hosted by Mos
Def season 2; episode 1, posted by andzooey, March 7, 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diNLPGHZbGM.
36

38

Carlson, 184.
Amr Atamish, A Punk)) , YouTube video, 5:48 , from a performance on Arabs Got Talent, season 1 episode 12,
posted by mbc, April 1, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk4XuN16xtg.
39

40

Eline Diamond, quoted in Carlson, 175.

41

Antonio Gramsci, "The Formation of the Intellectuals," in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. Vincent B.
Leitch et al. (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), 1135-1143.
42
Amin Hadad, We Are Coming Back, YouTube video, 3:55, performed by Eskenderla, March 12,1122 , Abd el Moniem
Riad Street, Cairo, posted by emanhemeda, March 12, 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJux_wEqCMs.
43

Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the World(London & New York: Routledge, 1982), 32.

44

Randy Martin, quoted in Carlson,141.

45

Chuck D, Fight the Power (1997) 256.

Quoted in Travis Holloway, Performing Art or Democracy? On Poetry at Occupy Wall Street, Guernica Magazine
(December 6, 2011), http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/3307/travis_holloway_performing_art/.
47
Travis Holloway, Performing Art or Democracy? On Poetry at Occupy Wall Street, Guernica Magazine (December 6,
2011), http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/3307/travis_holloway_performing_art/.
46

16

48

Ong, 74.

49

Finnegan, 28.

50

Carlson, 182.

51

Finnegan, 28.

17