For me one of the most grueling things about a spoken word artist is the memorization department.  Of course there is no rule that says you have to memorize your material as many people, including myself have used their cell phones and/or paper. 

I enjoy the freedom it allows me on stage- I do a lot of hand gestures and overall move around a lot, and without restrictions, I’m free to be me – also, I just feel it’s cleaner and gives me the ability to have eye contact with the audience. 

Back to the grueling part – My technique is taking the poem – chopping into four line blocks, and beating myself up until I get a section etched into memory – once I get one section down, I move on to the next and sew them together. 

I’ve bounced ideas off some poets and their strategies have ranged from recording it and listening to over like a song, to having an acquaintance read it back to them.  It’s a rough process but it’s the process that has been working for me for 20 years now. 

I was able to memorize two pieces last week – an accomplishment that almost made me do a cartwheel (ALMOST- I’ll get back to being able to do one, one day) – Both pieces I can add to my arsenal now, an arsenal that in my opinion needed some new material – I’m looking forward to performing them and getting the overall feel of the poems in my system.