Playing with Poems: Rules, Tools, and Games

Eslamnol

The Spanish section of the unit will be quite different from the English. While the English section is there to initially engage the students and get them to start thinking poetically about what they are passionate about, we take a detour with the Spanish section. It is important to expose the students to language that is not meant for learners so they can begin hearing it as it is supposed to be heard. When presenting a Spanish poem, I will ask the students to pay particular attention to rhyme, repetition, and the tone of the performance. The very fact that the students don't yet know Spanish is surprisingly an advantage. It forces and enables them to focus on form rather than content, including poetic elements that are important in English Spoken Word but that they might not immediately notice, as they focus on what is being said, rather than on how.

After scouring the net for good slam poetry in Spanish I discovered that Spain has many organizations dedicated to poetry. As a Spanish teacher, I have never really taught much about Spain because of its distance from the rest of the Hispanic world, linguistically and geographically. This unit is a good reason to incorporate a small lesson on Spain, highlighting the differences and similarities it has to the rest of the Spanish speaking world, especially Puerto Rico and Mexico.

The Spanish Poem I have transcribed was performed by Irene La Sen at the National Spanish Poetry Slam Championship in March 2011. The poem is entitled "Yo Soy" ⁹ which means "I am". This is great because the first thing students in Spanish 1 learn how to say is "I am (enter name)". In addition to the students being able to recognize the most repeated phrase in the poem, there are many cognates that the students should be able to pick out, especially when they read a transcription as they listen, which will be provided for them. The following is a transcription of the beginning (the rest can be found in the Appendix).

    Yo, Soy rancor
    Soy definición errónea, la pulcritud gastada,
    Te sonrió y es mentira
    Soy una falsa, con lamentos de destilo
    Yo, soy lo que tú odias
    Soy represión y rabia
    Soy sonrisa dulce y educación.
    Yo, soy a la que llamas puta,
    La que obra y calla la que serena
    te quitas los billetes, y te llena de impurezas
    No me imaginas así.
  

As you can see, even in this short section, students should be able to identify at least seven cognate which can be added to their vocabulary. The performance itself is very somber so students should be able to describe the theme as that.