In the film we watched, Louder Than a Bomb, the performances by the high schoolers surprised me because of their ability to express their deepest thoughts and emotions in front of so many people. These students clearly loved and were passionate about what they were doing. Speaking about your most personal feelings and experiences is scary and I cannot imagine doing that because of all the pressure that would be on me. I learned from this movie that spoken word poetry is a type of art that can be used to successfully express yourself in cases where you might have no other way to comfortably express yourself.

I do not think I would be able to perform spoken word poetry because it is one thing to have someone read your poems/writing, but it is completely different when I would have to get up in front of people and read it to them without suppressing my emotion. There are definitely strong connections between spoken word poetry and contemporary music. Specifically with rap because rap is essentially spoken word in a different form. Many rappers incorporate verses into their music that have less or no music in the background so that it sounds exactly like spoken word.