Why I Walked Away from Spoken Word (and Never Looked Back)

If you ever went to the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge in the early 2000s, you probably know the magic I’m talking about — the low light, the live band, the snap of fingers when a poet hit a nerve. For a while, that place felt like church to me. I’d slip into a seat, sometimes to listen, sometimes to step to the mic.

What most people didn’t know was that I wasn’t just a fan. I had trained for this. I spent four years in college writing poetry like my life depended on it. Jonathan Aaron taught me the heartbeat of iambic pentameter. The late Sam Cornish gave me permission to write in Black English and to keep my lines clipped, no apologies. He once wrote a poem about Black Jesus that I swear came from a series I’d been writing in his class. When I asked him about it, he shrugged: “It’s not the idea, it’s what you do with it.”

I was the only Black student in that program — so, go figure — but I was lucky. Bill Knott wrote me the shortest grad school recommendation ever: “You really need to accept Bridgit into your program.” Outside of school, I learned from the Dark Room Collective’s Thomas Sayers Ellis, who poured time and encouragement into my work.

I joined a troupe called Voices from a Beige to Blue Nation and performed around Boston. Over time, though, my poems stretched into prose. I wrote less poetry, but I still fed my spirit at open mics — the Cantab Lounge, Porter Square Books, and always, the Lizard Lounge.

The problem? I never liked slams. Poetry, to me, wasn’t meant to be scored like a gymnastics routine.

Then came the night that sealed it.

I’d gone to the Lizard Lounge with poems I needed to read. The only way to get on the mic was to enter the slam, so I did. The competition looked light, and I knew I could win. I read with fire, got strong applause, good scores.

Then she walked in. A sister I’d never seen before. She signed up late, took the stage, and unleashed this breathtaking piece about a young woman not knowing her beauty, braided with Nina Simone’s lyrics. She owned the room. The judges gave her the highest score. I lost.

I wasn’t devastated, but I couldn’t shake the question: Why did I leave feeling like I’d been measured instead of heard?

A few weeks later, I ran into Sam Cornish at the New England Mobile Book Fair. I told him the whole story.

“Why would a poet compete in a spoken word contest?” he said, not missing a beat. “That’s two different things. You’re a poet. She’s a spoken word artist.”

He was right. That was the last time I slammed.

I still read my work — in spaces where there’s no clock, no scorecards, no numbers between the poet and the listener. I’ve never stopped loving the energy of a good open mic. And if I happen to be at the Lizard Lounge, I’m happy to sit in the back, sip something cold, and just listen. Because now I know — sometimes, the truest power in poetry is what happens when it’s not competing for anything at all.