Alternative Voices

Over a Decade of Student Spoken Word Poetry

AKAI Model GX-M10 Stero Cassette Deck used for the large mic ports and connect to the computer with RCA cables

Year two we were still using pre-made audio loops from loopmania.com (no longer in existence), but we also started adding sound effects and creating our own beats with FruityLoops (FL Studio).

This is the year that we included the "N" word. In a poem entitled "4deepinmychebycaprice" the poet recounts and encounter with the police in which they think of him and his friends as "a hoopty with 4 n****** in it."

We fought and won the right to publish. The poem proved to be prophetic. Ten years later St. Louisans took to the streets to protest the killing of Michael Brown.

The Keyboard from my Sony Vaio

Hardware: Sony Vaio, Audio Technica ATR-30 mic, HP 2550 Color Laserjet.

This is the year that I won the Te@ch grant from Best Buy. I seem to remember it being for $1500, but I bought a lot with it. All of the hardware listed above was purchased with the grant and I still had enough left over to buy a copy of The Incredibles on DVD.

We were still using Fruity Loops, but I did have a student that made most of the beats. I also apparently purchased Sony Sound Forge with the grant.

We also had a student that could play bass guitar. He brought it in, plugged in to the old tape deck and provided musical interludes.

As you can tell from the cover art we were dealing with censorship this year. Nobody was messing with our CD, but the Internet was locked down, so we had problems get to the websites and software that we needed.

We were in a groove for the next several years, but we did add a disclaimer, so the district and I would not be held responsible for the content.

Sometime during this period I tried get the students to understand copyright, and tried to get them to grant us the right to one time publishing. That has since fallen away.

This was the year that a student knocked my vintage amp off my desk while the headphones were plugged in. The jack was bent and must have messed with other electronics. I attempted to apply my expertise which involved unscrewing the case and staring at stuff to no avail.

Fearing the demise of the CD we abandoned the jewel boxes and tried special limited edition packaging. I wanted to give out flash drives, but never came up with a creative way of delivery.

This was also the year that a former student came to visit and mentioned that he worked at a recording studio down the block (Gateway Digital Studios). That year and every year since we have loaded onto a bus and headed to the studio. The students get a chance to work as sound engineers and are excited to step into a booth instead of hoping everyone in my classroom can be quiet enough to get a good recording.

In 2017 We abandoned CDs because the world had and began making videos. There was a failed attempt at using an augmented reality app called Aurasma to key off of student art work. If you had the app and focused on the image in the book it was supposed to play the video. Unfortunately, most of the artwork was capable of being recognized by the app.

We ended up using QR codes. The videos have since been moved because I figured out how to make and embed a YouTube playlist.

Alternative Voices XV

Special Edition - Ferguson

In 2014 students came to school during the protests over the murder Mike Brown. The week before school started the superintendent had a meeting to address how we should talk to the students. Back in 2004 she had been the Asst. Superintendent of Curriculum who approve our use of the "N" word, so she was well aware of the work we had been doing. She suggested that I have the student write poems.

In order to avoid too much conflict, I decided to have the students focus on and describe images from the media.

These poems were not without controversy however. I posted the poems with the images on the bulletin board in the hallway. A visitor to our school thought we were sending anti-police messages and called the mayor's office to complain.

It was decided that I should take down the bulletin board, but I did manage to get the mayor to visit my students and explain the decision.

'24-'25 SY St. Louis Art Museum

The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century

Since the pandemic I have not recorded with the students, but this is a collection of ekphrastic poetry written after our visit to the St. Louis Art Museum.

Ekphrasis.pdf

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