ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses trends in delivery found within British ‘spoken word’. Key features of this delivery mode are identified through interviews, close listening, and analyses of performances by Kate Tempest and Caleb Femi. Drawing on linguistics alongside Geneva Smitherman’s writings on Black Semantics, I consider parallels with talk-singing and tonal semantics and discuss ways in which this distinctive prosody can impact the meaning potential of a poem. This chapter reveals that the dominant mode of delivery, or ‘prosody’ used by British spoken word poets limits the expressive potential of the voice in performance and instead becomes a marker of ‘British spoken word’ itself. Although I demonstrate that ‘British spoken word’ can be identified by its intonation and syntax, I acknowledge the absurdity of separating out one group of poets from another, or performance from the page, and call for an emphasis on listening, and expanding the expressive possibilities of the voice in performance.
