Teaching spoken word poetry as a tool for decolonizing and africanizing the South African curricula and implementing “literocracy”

ABSTRACT

This article offers a definition of spoken word poetry that challenges the view that sees it as something different from “poetry”, and as a minor subgenre produced by marginal writers in sites unworthy of academic investigation. It maintains that spoken word poetry is poetry inscribed with textual and extra-textual elements, and – because of its multimodal “nature”, versatility, and sensitivity towards youth culture – it is particularly fit to be discussed and taught in South African multicultural English classrooms, particularly at a time when the decolonisation of knowledge stands at the core of the discourses on contemporary South African culture. It suggests that, in order to decolonise and africanise poetry curricula, teachers and scholars should adopt “participatory observation” research methodologies, and teach multimodally the works of poets so far excluded from the curricula.

Keywords:

• poetry
• spoken word poetry
• decolonisation and africanisation of curricula
• multimodality
• participant observation
• literacy
• literocracy