Spoken Word Poetry as Resistance in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa

Abstract

This thesis looks at how spoken word poetry functions as a form of resistance. I discuss the ways we can look at resistance, how spoken word poetry acts out resistance, and how we might try to close- ‘read’ a poetic form that is performative, oral and literary. Poems are looked at in the context of Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa, an extremely diverse city in a colonised country. Spoken word poetry is not new – it was present in ancient societies and is still focal in the functionings of societies around the world. The spoken word poetry movement in the English-speaking world is reclaiming and reaffirming the power of poetry, the oral and the performative. One of the key parts of that power is the ability of poetry to express what is otherwise inexpressible in language, to reach into the humanness that is lost when society operates amidst injustices such as colonisation and poverty. One of the biggest tools those in power deploy to maintain and build their power is the process of dehumanisation. Spoken word poetry has the capacity to rupture that process by virtue of using language and performance as tools to disturb ‘the distribution of the sensible’. This thesis uses both decolonising writers and Western writers to deconstruct what resistance consists of. I look at a number of poems from poets around the city, including South Auckland Poets Collective, Decolonise and Waxed Poetic Revival.