A Planetary Text Notes On Spoken and Word Poetry, Radical Improvisation and Universality (ACLA 2025)
Organizer: F..M. Ceci
Co-Organizer: Ginevra Ludovici
This panel seeks to explore the intersections of spoken word poetry and radical improvisation in music, considering how both practices function as tools of liberation, subversion, and radical democratic engagement. At their core, spoken word and improvisational performances offer a dynamic space where voices can challenge dominant narratives and create alternatives through linguistic and performative experimentation.
Improvisation, in its radical form, implies a break from pre-existing structures, an embrace of the unknown, and an openness to the present moment. Spoken word, on the other hand, draws from deep oral traditions while simultaneously reworking them through the immediacy of contemporary issues such as racial justice, gender equality, decolonization, and environmentalism. As a performative practice, they rely on the spontaneity of the performer’s response to their environment and historical context. In this panel, we aim to examine how poets and musicians employ improvisation as a form of radical engagement. We are particularly interested in proposals that address the following questions:
- How does the spontaneous, unscripted nature of improvisation in spoken word performances generate new modes of critical engagement with pressing sociopolitical issues? How can it work as a constituent / destituent device? [Agamben, 2015]
- In what ways does radical improvisation, as practiced in spoken word, function as a method of decolonization, undermining hegemonic narratives through its rejection of formal constraints?
- What is the role of the body, voice, and temporality in shaping the improvisational space of spoken word? How do these elements affect the reception of the work by different audiences?
This panel invites scholars, performers, and activists who are engaged in the study or practice of spoken word and improvisation to explore how these art forms resist commodification and formalization. We are particularly interested in contributions that center the voices of BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and other marginalized communities, whose use of spoken word and radical improvisation defies the traditional boundaries of the academy and the performance stage alike.
By bringing together a range of perspectives from across disciplines—literature, performance studies, ethnomusicology, and critical theory—this panel seeks to foster a rich dialogue on the potentials and limits of improvisation as a tool of resistance. We hope to challenge participants to think about how the spontaneous, often ephemeral nature of these performances can be documented, theorized, and sustained as a living archive of radical thought. Further, we invite reflections on the tensions between the revolutionary aspirations of improvisation and the institutional frameworks that attempt to contain or co-opt it.