Slam Poetry and Spoken Word
Spotlight Series (Part 1)
Defne
Here at Hustlers Handbook, we are all about celebrating talent and who better than the Slam poets and Spoken word poets.
The first in this series is Defne, Coming straight out of West Sydney is a hugely talented Poet and she is a true wordsmith and dedicated to her craft.
Between running the West Side Poetry Slam and Definitely Defne Photography she puts her heart and soul into it. Even co-running Workshops.
Last year even winning the Surry Hills Australian Poetry Slam heat and getting to the Finals and earlier that year having her Poem “Misplaced Teeth” in the UNSW Yearly literary journal UNSWeetened.
We did a Q&A interview with her and I was inspired by her answers and it gave me a new appreciation for poetry and the hard work they put into it.
Her Links are below
https://www.facebook.com/definitelydefnephotography/
https://www.facebook.com/westsidepoetry/
https://www.instagram.com/definitelydefne101/
Enough from me here is the Interview.
Where are you from?
I’m Turkish but I was born in Australia, lived here for a few years then in Thailand for 8 years and now here I am again in Western Sydney.
How long have you been writing/performing?
I feel like in a way I’ve always been a writer and performer. I was that kid with a wild imagination who could preoccupy herself by coming up with stories and acting them out. However, I think grade 6 was when I finally put it to paper and wrote my first poem. I, later on, started writing songs despite not knowing an instrument or how to produce music or being a great singer, but I would still sing at school talent shows. April 2016 however is when I wrote what I think is my first performance poem.
At the time I wasn’t sure what form I was writing, it seemed a hybrid between a poem and a narrative story. Later I came upon my first open mic night/poetry slam and performed it. It was fittingly on my 16th birthday and since then I feel like I was reborn in a way as a performance poet.
Running the slams must be amazing, what is it like?
Co-running the slams is amazing, but it is also a fair bit of work.
I took over Granville Poetry Slam (which was once Parramatta Poetry Slam where I first performed at) when previous slam master Troy Wong decided to step down. I stepped up to it at just age 18 because I saw it as a chance to adult in something I was passionate about. In the set up it was a lot of calling up people about venues and figuring out rent and public liability insurance and all the not so fun stuff. But then in July 2019 WestWords graciously became partners and started to host us and we rebranded as West Side Poetry Slam, which made things quite a bit easier and better.
I’m also a photographer so along with co-hosting/MCing on the night I take photos, edit them, and do most of the content creation and social media management and marketing. Each slam is a month’s work into a night in which you have no idea how it’s going to go until it does, but it’s always worth it. It’s this cosy, intimate, beautiful, fun night full of sharing with friends and friendly strangers. People perfectly put into words something you feel but might have never even thought to articulate.
If you could meet any poet dead or alive who would it be?
I mean if I have the option of necromancy then I’m going for the dead. I’d choose Sylvia Plath, I think out of everyone I’ve read, I’ve appreciated and been impacted by her poetry the most.
What is your creative process? How do you find the focus of your poem?
Usually, I’m emotionally affected by something, and I have a habit of just writing my thoughts down as a response. Thankfully, I’d say some of my thoughts are just naturally poetic. Sometimes poetry is just an aesthetically organised stream of consciousness. I just start writing whatever pops to my mind but then sometimes early on I’ll already have an idea or couple of lines of how I want to end it. If we think of poetry as essays I think of the last couple of lines in a poem as an essay’s thesis statement.
You have the main point to say but you also have all these different points to hit your audience with along the way to prove your main point stronger. Sometimes my mind just goes on tangents, whether it’s because it starts having a focused rhyme or rhythm at parts or a simile or metaphor that comes up. But then I’m like “oh yeah, this can mean something too”. I can end up talking about something I wasn’t intending to but that can either be a blessing or a curse. A curse because your poem can be unfocused. A blessing because you’ve thought of something in a new way. I think of writing a poem as a puzzle, sometimes the puzzle gets bigger than you think it will be and more pieces turn up and it expands so it makes it harder to figure out what fits where.
After I get everything out thoughts and feelings wise I literally just have lines and have to think about order wise where they best fit. I find focus again through the editing process, and thinking well what really initially was my point with this, and has it changed throughout writing it? Sometimes your main point does change and there’s a shift, but that’s okay, that shows development in time and events and characters and thoughts and feelings. But it’s about making sure that shift is also clear.
How has your life or environment inspired your poetry?
I mean I do mostly write about my personal life. It definitely is cathartic and a type of therapy and once I feel like I turned perhaps an ugly part into art or celebrated something already good that I want immortalized, I feel like my mind can rest a bit more. When I was younger I used to just write about more imagined situations and in a way, it definitely is easier to write because there are no restrictions. However, when you are writing something more autobiographical there can be this pressure of trying to make sure you represent it as accurately as possible.
Especially with performance poetry, I think there is this expectation that what you say, this is you because it’s directly coming from you. However, I appreciate when my real life might inspire something, but then takes a life of its own. Even if it’s based on a friend I allow them to become a different version in a poem, a persona, or in the end a new character. It’s just this balance between real life and imagination that changes with each poem.
What is the best poetry you have heard or written?
Gosh, this is hard, I’ll make it easier for myself and just say out of all the poets I personally know and have heard live,Elliot York Cameron ,Dante Florez, and Mohammad Award are my favourite three. In terms of my best, I find it funny that I still think a couple of the first performance poems I’ve written are my best.
But my current best and favourite is the last poem I finished, titled Another Tattoo of You.
Are there any themes or motifs that you gravitate to?
Themes? Love & friendship & mental health & daddy issues coughs coughs I’d say I don’t really have any motifs in terms of stylistic device or symbolism as that changes to suit each poem’s subject and it’s more having a motif repeat in a poem rather than throughout my poetry.
How do you define spoken word and slam?
So I think everyone has a different understanding and definition for it so people shall disagree with me. However, for me I think there’s a little spectrum. Spoken-word, to me, is self-explanatory and literal, it is simply words that are spoken. Mostly written with the intention to be spoken and heard rather than read.
Yet what I also appreciate about our slams is seeing people reading out something they wrote for themselves and never thought to share before. Performance poetry though is going a little step above that and considering a poem as performance, how can I make this more entertaining or convey it better? What tone of voice should I use at certain parts, what emotion, what movement, am I standing still or walking around the stage? What effect would that have? Sometimes I and other poets choreograph moves, hand gestures, stomping etc to specific lines. It’s this little convergence between poetry and acting. Slam poetry though to me is usually competition poetry.
You’re in it to win it. You put your absolute all and best into a poem and expertly craft and perform it. Usually, there is a time limit and then you get a numerical score. I associate slam poetry with social justice subjects and activism and being loud, not necessarily in terms of sonical volume, but the volume of what you are saying.
I think overall though the important difference is between page and performance poetry. I think of performance poetry as more accessible, which isn’t to say it’s dumber. But you don’t have as much time with a performance poem as you do for an audience member to sit with a page poem and soak up the words and think about what this might mean and other interpretations of it. By that point in a slam, they’ve already moved onto the next sentence. But hence why theatrics can help. Every single art form has its perks and limitations and that’s why I try to make sure every person I come across is no longer a poetry slam virgin. If they’re not the biggest fan afterwards that’s fine, but the word “poetry” still has an association with school and tedious work that’s too complex to figure out without a lot of time, teacher, or research.
Any tips for the upcoming Poet?
Share. Please just share. I think a lot about all the art I’ve missed out on because someone decided not to. But someone out there, someday, is going to be thankful that you shared your art. And you’re going to be thankful that you shared it too. We’re a very supportive community and sharing and being exposed to other poetry that you end up being thankful for and admiring and being inspired by, is also what’s going to help you improve. What goes around comes around, we feed each other.
I am also linking in a video in the comments of her in action at the Australian Poetry Slam Sydney Final.
Show this Legend Some Love!!!!!!
Comment below or let me know who we should interview next!!!
As always any Poets/Artists/Groups/DJs/producers hit us up for an interview or Tag your Favorite Artists!!!!
Peace
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