Combating voice poverty through spoken word poetry: an interview with Candy Royalle

ABSTRACT

Spoken word poetry is recognised as a potent means of enabling young people to express themselves and explore their vulnerability. Based on an interview with the Australian poet Candy Royalle, this article examines her views in relation to spoken word poetry’s capacity to combat voice poverty in young people. Royalle stresses the importance of embedding spoken word poetry in young people’s education in order for them to accrue its benefits. This entails paying more attention to the kind of poetry that is included in the curriculum, and to the development of teachers’ and students’ engagement with the genre.

KEYWORDS:

• Candy Royalle
• education
• poetry
• spoken word
• voice poverty
• vulnerability
• and youth

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Candy Royalle for granting me an interview and Tamryn Bennett from The Red Room Company for introducing me to her. Further information about Royalle’s work can be found here: http://candyroyalle.com. Information about The Red Room Company’s poetry education projects is available here: http://redroomcompany.org/education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.