[]
Spoken Word
  • Published: 16 April 2023
  • ISBN: 9781529110487
  • Imprint: Square Peg
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $45.00
Categories:

Spoken Word

Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Find local retailers Find local retailers Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

Part cultural history, part ethnography, part memoir, Spoken Word is an exploration of one of the world's oldest artforms.

Part cultural history, part ethnography, part memoir, Spoken Word explores the history of the western world's oldest form of literary expression, from its unifying role in ethnic minority communities to its ability to give a young black man a voice in society.

Joshua Bennett takes us on electrifying journey, from the epic poems of The Iliad and The Odyssey to social scene of 19th century Philadelphia to today's contemporary black storytellers like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Saul Williams and even Pulitzer-prize-winning Kendrick Lamar, to discover the personal and the political in the art of poetry.

This book will tell the tale of spoken word poetry's rise from local pastime to global phenomenon.
  • Published: 16 April 2023
  • ISBN: 9781529110487
  • Imprint: Square Peg
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $45.00
Categories:

About the authors

Joshua Bennett

Dr. Joshua Bennett is the author of The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016), which was a National Poetry Series selection and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He is also the author of Being Property Once Myself (Harvard University Press, 2020), Owed (Penguin, 2020), The Study of Human Life (Penguin, 2022), and Spoken Word: A Cultural History (Knopf, 2023). He has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He is a Professor of Literature and Distinguished Chair of the Humanities at MIT.
portrait photo of Joshua Bennett