The Professor in Your Neighborhood: Heather Maring and Spoken Word Poets

You’ve heard it and seen it, or perhaps heard of it: a person, alone on a stage performing emotionally charged verse, tackling strong feelings or personal experiences in a few short minutes: Spoken Word Poetry. 

Discover how voice, gestures, physical presence, and community are meaningful elements of the spoken word and slam poetry experience—for observer and poet alike. 

ASU Associate Professor Heather Maring and ASU graduate students in creative writing Aaliyah Daniels and Zack Lesmeister present "The Art and Power of Presence," exploring the ins and outs of spoken-word and slam poetry through performance and discussion. 

About the presenter

The Literature Program in the Department of English at ASU presents this event in its "The Professor in Your Neighborhood" series. ASU's Heather Maring is a poet, Beowulf expert, and creator of a spoken word poetry course at ASU.

Her research explores how early English poems draw upon oral, literary, and ritual forms of signification for their meaning. She is author of “Signs That Sing: Hybrid Poetics in Old English Verse” and served as a contributing editor on UNESCO’s “Manual on Oral Traditions and Expressions.”