It’s my first time at Rooftop Rhythms, the Middle East’s longest running poetry open mic. I can’t find a seat. The Marketplace is full, with some audience members and performers coming all the way from Dubai. I’m not there because it’s my idea of fun. Attending a poetry reading or a spoken word event is required for the poetry class I’m currently enrolled in, but I’ve personally never enjoyed listening to poetry readings out loud. My professor’s directive to “let the words wash over you” doesn’t work for me. I’m always distracted by the way the poet pronounces a certain word, or their gestures, or that occasional preamble that intrudes on my interpretation of the poem.

Of course, all these aspects can sometimes be part of the performance — a poetry reading is a performance, and spoken word more so — drawing its power from something other than the words alone. But for Arthur De Oliveira, Class of 2019 and my classmate in the poetry class, excessive performativity can undermine what the words themselves do.

“When I go to a poetry reading and I see people move a lot, I feel like they don’t understand what the poem is about. It’s kind of like a lack of trust [in the poem], I have to perform it for it to actually be something,” said De Oliveira.

It might seem counterintuitive that the performance of poetry can hinder one’s appreciation of the words, given that language is primarily oral. Writing was not invented until around 3000 B.C., and even today our communications depend not only on the content of the words but their delivery or tone. Poetic traditions, too, are rooted in orality, from the epics of Homer to the lyrics of Kendrick Lamar or Bob Dylan, who was controversially awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2016.

Syrian poet Adonis claimed that modern Arabic poetry was hindered by critics’ idealization of the pre-literate poetry, whose oral qualities don’t always apply to written text.

“Going to poetry readings with the potential of performing onstage has influenced my writing style. I won’t deny that,” said Shamma Al Bastaki, Class of 2018. “But I’ve always focused on the way the poem reads as a poem, and the way I craft words on a sentence by sentence basis or a line by line basis, as opposed to just how they sound.”

For Mona Nehme, Class of 2018, the act of reading a poem out loud is more about communicating emotion than demonstrating craft.

“I think it’s way easier to connect with words once you hear them, because when we communicate as humans, so much of it is through registering the other person’s voice, the intonations, the pauses,” she said.

Nehme had performed a poem during Open Mic in her sophomore year, and in her junior year did a Student Led Production in which she hung her poems on the walls of a gallery. Headphones were available for visitors who wished to hear them recited by her.

Nehme writes as an emotional outlet while also hoping to encourage discussions around mental health. “It’s sadness, it’s emotion, it’s the human condition, struggle,” she said. “I think a lot of spoken word comes from that place.”

At Rooftop Rhythms, it’s not uncommon to hear a performer prelude a poem with a wish for the audience to relate, whether through asking if audience members have ever felt a certain way, or explaining what the poem is intended to do.

“For me, poetry readings have always been about the community and the social aspect of it,” said Shamma Al Bastaki. Al Bastaki began reading her poems at the age of fifteen, and belongs to Untitled Chapters, a network of over 40 female Emirati writers who regularly host poetry readings.

As American poet Donald Hall notes, readings have become a regular part of a poet’s career, as evidenced by the events on our campus whenever a poet visits. A reading raises several considerations for the poet, who becomes more aware of the question of audience. Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish was renowned for his poem “Identity Card”, inspired by his declaration to Israeli government officials when he was placed under house arrest. Yet Darwish refused to recite the poem outside Israel to audiences of thousands of Arabs, the phrase “Write it down: I am Arab!” speaks less to defiance and more to nationalism.

While there needn’t be a strict binary between the kind of poetry you’d hear at a reading by an established poet and an evening of various performers, spoken word is more conducive to communicating strong feelings and themes of identity or defiance. It’s “punchy,” as Al Bastaki describes it, which could explain why Darwish’s poem continues to be recited, crossing over from page to stage.

Perhaps you’re unlikely to hear a poem about nature or trees at an event like Rooftop Rhythms; perhaps the ephemerality of spoken word necessitates the sacrifice of metaphors that need lingering on, but in its place is a community built around a different way of appreciating words.