Today’s guest blogger is Adrian Arancibia, an author and critic based in San Diego, California. He is a founder of the seminal Chicano/Latino performance poetry collective Taco Shop Poets. Born in Iquique, Chile (1971), Arancibia is the co-editor of the Taco Shop Poets Anthology: Chorizo Tonguefire and author of the collection Atacama Poems. He is a Ph.D. candidate in literature at the University of California at San Diego and an associate professor of English at Miramar Community College. Arancibia’s creative work depicts and comments on the lives of immigrants; his critical work focuses on literature and its relation to social spaces.
Each semester, I trek to the A/V department, check out a small PA system with a microphone and stand, and bring the equipment to my creative writing class. I tell my students that poems are meant be heard—so they need to learn to read their own works aloud. They need to speak them. In public. For the world to hear. Through this experience, they find that the pieces they’ve cobbled together over the course of the semester take on new meaning.
First, I lay my ground rules. I repeat the rules I learned some 25 years ago, when I performed in a choir. Yes, I was a “Gleek” before there was Glee on Fox television. The lessons I learned from our director, Mr. Bolles, have helped me in my own public readings and still make sense for reading pieces aloud. And yes, most of my students will read their poems aloud in community readings at one point or another in their lives.
Rule 1: Don’t lock your knees; no one wants to see you pass out due to lack of circulation
Rule 2: Don’t be afraid of the mic. Bring it close. Enunciate. Slow down when you read.
Rule 3: Don’t make nervous gestures with your hands and feet. These are distracting. Minimize your movements to those that are nearly imperceptible.
Rule 4: Don’t give long introductions that apologize for or explain your poem. Give the title and read. The audience will thank you.
Rule 5: Things never change. That is, no matter how well or how poorly you read, the things that matter stay the same. The poem you were proud of is still the poem you were proud of.
Then, having laid out these ground rules, I call on the shy girl in my class and force her to slow down. I force the student who wants to mumble to enunciate. And, I find little surprises that make me realize why I love teaching students. Like today, one student, I’ll call him Byron, began to read in a monotone voice. He continued this way until, eventually, he found the cadences and beats of his poem. Once he’d heard the rhythm, he rode it to the end. When he finished, the class applauded and remarked that he had read the best. I took a pause to appreciate the moment. Byron had learned to listen to himself; he’d found confidence in his writing and carried the rest of the class along with him.
Thanks, Mr. Bolles. I promise to continue teaching the rules to my students next semester.