Slam Poetry Inspiration

February 10, 2019

Slam Poetry Inspiration

Sexual harassment is a theme that is difficult to approach. It is so intensely emotional, and can be in many ways subjective. No two people's experiences and feelings are going to be exactly the same. We did't want to do another tone deaf, cliche film about sexual harassment. We felt a responsibility to produce a truthful representation of the emotions experienced during such an event.To do so, we realized there was a lot of research to be done.

In addition, Connor was still looking for ways to express emotion visually on screen, and we felt he needed some inspiration from people who have gone through similar things to the characters.

I thought about what I had seen of themes like anxiety and sexual harassment in media, and realized the format I had most connected with it was poetry. Spoken word poetry is in a way, quite raw. There are no props or characters, just people on stage reciting. The audience can focus only on the emotion and the words conveyed in order to tell the story. In addition, poetry is very personal - most poems are about personal experiences.

I searched online and found a number of poems that viscerally expressed the emotions that we were also trying to.