Spoken Word for Beginners: Poetic Form for the Stage

Spoken Word for Beginners is a how-to guide for writing dynamic, compelling poems that sound best performed aloud.

The oral tradition of reciting original poetry aloud for an audience is as old as time. As a veteran of slam poetry spaces for the fifteen years, I have developed a deep love and study for the kind of poems that animate a room full of people, challenge us to be better, and speak to our collective truths and experiences with vulnerability, passion, and a desire to be understood. Whether you've always wanted to perform your work onstage or you're just curious about the craft of spoken word, this class was made for you.

Over the course of five weeks, you'll learn how to write in poetic forms that work best onstage. During each weekly workshop, we'll study and discuss 1-3 video performances (with accompanying text) of slam poems that best exemplify technique, daring, and literary craft. Lectures, slideshows, and generative prompts will be provided to help us understand why and how the example poems achieve their goals. Writing and sharing time is included. While we are here to learn how to write poetry for performance, this is not about competition, fame, acting, telling other people's stories, or performance style. We are here to learn how the spoken word can be used ethically and passionately to connect with others.

My teaching philosophy is inspired by my background in spoken word poetry community spaces and my degrees in ethnic studies and librarianship, all of which instilled in me the values of accessibility and the joy of learning, which I believe is a right. Poets of all backgrounds and experience levels are welcome, but my teaching focuses on uplifting writers of color & LGBTQIA+ poets specifically.  Expect to read and study poems by poets like E.J. Schoenborn, Danez Smith, Tonya Ingram, and Kyle "Guante" Tran Myhre.

Schedule

We will meet once a week from May 14 - June 11, 2026 on Thursdays from 7pm-9pm CST. We will also meet for the final showcase on Saturday, June 13 from 7pm-9pm CST. All times are listed in Central Standard Time. Class dates: May 14, 21, 28 and June 4, 11, and 13.

• Week 1: Introduction to Writing the Self - How to write confessional poetry about the self using a structure popularized by Haitian-American poet Carvens Lissaint, with a focus on rhythm, repetition, and personality.
• Week 2: Complex Odes (Tension, Social Critique, Analogies) - Taken a step further from traditional formal literary odes, slam poetry odes are often used to convey a complicated truth about the poet. This week, we'll dive into tips on how to write an ode that makes someone look at a forgotten or overlooked thing with newfound appreciation.
• Week 3: Letting Off Steam (Letters, Rants, Responses) - Get some things off your chest this week in a workshop that encourages you to address pet peeves/grievances and speak back to structures of power (or that really annoying co-worker at your job).
• Week 4: Showing Off (Remixing) - Explore the bounds of an idea by remixing, revising, and complicating it throughout your poem. This week we'll study poems that circle back to their original ideas, playing with absurdity, comprehension, and overwhelm to surprise and entrance an audience.
• Week 5: Anthems (Honest Poems of Uplift) - These are the poems that made a lot of us fall in love with spoken word in the first place. In this final week, we'll study and write poems of uplift, encouraging/helpful reminders in the face of the harshness of life, and anthems for any part of us that feels unloved and needs celebration.

Who is this for?

• Poets of all experience levels (including beginners!)
• Poets interested in getting better at understanding what makes a poem sound/feel good when recited aloud
• Writers looking to refresh their poetry writing practice
• Poets who find themselves writing the same styles & types of poems & want to try something new
• Writers interested in reading & uplifting the experiences of poets of color
• Poets who are afraid to call themselves poets because their definition may look different from the literary world's definition of a "poet"

This workshop is not for...

• Poets interested in performance feedback or tips on how to win a slam
• Poets looking to network instead of being in community
• Poets looking for an in-depth class on publishing
• Poets who believe poetry has to sound & look a certain way
• Poets primarily interested in promoting their own books & projects
• Poets who look down upon spoken word poetry, self-publishing, or community-based poets

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Ariana Brown

Writer, Teacher & Librarian

Ariana Brown is a queer Black Mexican American poet from San Antonio, TX, now based in Houston. She is the author of the poetry collections We Are Owed. (Grieveland, 2021) and Sana Sana (Game Over Books, 2020). Her academic and poetic works explore queerness, Black personhood in Mexican American spaces, girlhood, loneliness, and care. Ariana is a national collegiate poetry slam champion, winner of two Academy of American Poets Prizes, and a recipient of a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Grant.

She holds a BA in African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American Studies from UT Austin, an MFA in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh, and an MS in Library and Information Science from the University of North Texas. She currently develops ethnic studies and ELA curriculum for high schools and colleges and teaches creative writing to teens in Houston. Ariana has been writing, performing, and teaching for over a decade. She has been a competing member, coach, or lead organizer at over a dozen regional/national poetry slam tournaments from 2009 to present.

Learn more about Ariana's teaching philosophy.