Slam poets touch on issues of social injustice
▶ LARA KORTE
@lara_korte
Denice Frohman, nationally-known slam poet, is known for her poems that strive to break down social barriers by talking about controversial topics, like race, sexuality, gender and the "in-between" of each.
Award-winning slam poet Denice Frohman performed at Smith Hall Thursday night.
At her performance Thursday night in Smith Hall, hosted by the University chapter of the Hispanic American Leadership Organization, Frohman's poems organized on issues of cultural identity, demanding space as an LGBTQ+ individual and addressing where inequalities lie in our everyday lives.
Comfort is not a theme for the slam poet. Part-way through her set, Frohman announced the next poem would be about the Charleston shooting and gave the audience a bit of a preface.
"It's not going to be easy," she said. "But that's OK because we're not here to do the comfortable thing."
One of Frohman's first poems, "Weapons," retells her experience speaking at a West Philadelphia high school, where students were required to go through security every morning to check for weapons.
"I ask them if they have dreams, [and] 11 students raise their hands barely above their shoulders, as if they were sitting in history class unaware of the right answer. One student in the first row, Luciano, was waiting for me to tell him what page to turn to; another student in the eighth row was trying to decide if this is a trick question. "There's no right answer. I say, but they are far too comfortable with the right to remain silent," Frohman said in her poem.
She explained the story was meant to show the unseen forms of violence that can take place in those kinds of environments.
"I think we're so concerned with creating policy and protocols to make sure a weapon
is not on the plane, a weapon is not in the classroom, and I'm not discrediting that," Frohman said. "But we have to have critical conversations about violence and different manifestations of violence,not just the physical,but something cultural, emotional and psychological."
Frohman's energy was contagious, and the room quickly became a community. At a particularly poignant phrasing or quick-witted line, audience members would cheer, snap and yell to show their admiration.
It's that kind of community and energy that drew Jordan Winter, a freshman from Overland Park, and Margarita Nunez Arroyo, a junior from Compton, Calif., to the art of slam poetry.
"A lot of people see poetry as something soft and abstract, like it's something that you just write down in a book," Winter said. "But what I love about slam poetry is that it's really performance-based so you can get up and just scream your heart out into a mic and have everybody snapping for you."
Lara Korte/KANSAN
"You can get up and just scream your heart out into a mic and have everybody snapping for you."
Jordan Winter freshman
Winter and Nunez Arroyo were the opening acts for Frohman, each reciting their own personal pieces before coming together for a collaboration poem.
Nunez Arroyo said for her, being onstage has a dance-like quality to it that allows her to be authentic.
"I'm a dance minor, so for me it's like the beats, and when you're doing slam poetry there's a sound to it, and a click, and you just get into this thing, and you can even like sway yourself to the sound to your own voice," Nunez Arroyo said. "Words just touch people, and there's so much sound, and you just feel so alive, and it's this, like, amazing feeling, and you're up there and, yeah, you can like scream and shout, and it's you."
The poem the two performed together was born out of a similar struggle they each experience in their own identity: their names.
"One day my mother told me she had named me Jordan because she thought it's unique, but I felt weak in the knees when I heard my beautiful identity; my Cherokee name is Chodana," Winter
"When I was six years old, I was robbed of my name, the imprint of my Mexican heritage as four syllables became two," Nunez Arroyo said.
said.
The poem continues to tell how the erasure of each woman's name imitates the erasure of their ancestors.
"We are not as different as we may seem at first glance," Winter said. "Our blood drips down in the same gradient that patterns our spectrum of peoples: Native Americans, Mexican Americans, we are both indigenous Northern Americans. Stories supported by our ancestors' spines are the kinds so strong they cannot even be bound by book spines, the backbone to this nation."
Nunez Arroyo said heritage is something that comes into play a lot in her writing. One thing she often does is include Spanish in her poetry as a way of declaring her voice.
"Usually when I include Spanish, it's because it's a way of kind of saying like 'I will speak my language. It's kind of declaring, like, my Spanish
tongue is here and it will not be silenced," Nunez Arroyo said. "And if I write something in Spanish and don't offer a translation in my nonfiction writing, it's because if you want to know, you can search it up, I don't have to feed you what it means. So that when I write in Spanish, it always has some sort of purpose in it."
Heritage is not the only theme the two poets write about. Both said feminism, racial tension and other issues of social justice are often on their minds.
"I think poetry is a great platform to kind of do deep analization of social structures and maybe things people wouldn't think about when, you know, things that are oppressing people or people with privilege generally don't see it from the other person's eyes," Winter said. "So, it's a really great way to make people think."
Frohman travels to various high schools and college campuses across the nation using poetry as a way to break down social injustices. Frohman said it's up to the schools, especially administration, to get serious about making campuses an accepting place for all.
"It's time to move forward; it's time not just to have meetings and diversity committees because, you know we can check off something on our little bucket list. I think we need to have serious conversations about privilege, and it's not just something that happens in one class; it's not just something that happens in one day during Black History month, or Latino history month or Pride week, it needs to be embedded into the everyday culture of KU." Frohman said. "I firmly believe that it will make the school better."
- Edited by Garrett Long
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