SMU student takes spoken word to national stage

By Michael Kimber
As he squinted beneath the hazy lights of Coconut Grove, Andrew Abraham’s nose was running, his throat was sore and his head ached. A clapping, ecstatic hometown crowd surrounded him, cheering “Halifax! Halifax!”

He was sick. And he felt fantastic.

On that night in October 2007, Abraham’s team won the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word championship in Halifax.

What makes Abraham’s accomplishment more remarkable is where he comes from – and where he was headed six years ago.

Enlarge Image
Saint Mary’s student Andrew Abraham studies philosophy while exploring his passion for spoken word. (Photo: Michael Kimber)

An African Nova Scotian, he was raised in central Halifax by his white mother and often felt the education system did not teach his history. By Grade 10, he says, he’d begun to lose interest in education. He was 16.

That’s when he met up with his high school’s student support worker, Dennis Adams.

Adams brought him to the Leave Out ViolencE program to learn photojournalism. LOVE’s members have witnessed, committed or been victims of violence and the goal is to help these young people to express themselves.

Abraham showed up because they were giving out free food.

He stayed — and gained confidence— because workers like Adams and Executive Director Sarah MacLaren helped him realize he could make something of himself.

“At LOVE we define success as when the kids feel successful,” says MacLaren. Success means different things to different kids. For some, it’s keeping their jobs for a month or staying off drugs.

For Andrew, it meant realizing that what he said was valuable.

By the time he was 18, Abraham had begun working at LOVE and, at 22, became a full-time employee. He’s now finishing a philosophy degree at Saint Mary’s University, where he his grade-point average is a little over four.

LOVE outreach worker Ardath Whynacht brought him to Speak, a monthly evening of spoken word that brings together Halifax poets in a multicultural setting. After a year of writing poetry for live performances, he was chosen for the Halifax team sent to the national festival.  He’ll be on this year’s team, too, competing in Calgary in November.   
Despite the recognition he thinks the idea of a poetry “competition,” where randomly chosen people from the crowd score poets’ performance, is as stupid as judging intelligence by how one does in school.

“Grades are just a game,” says Abraham. “There are so many different brands of intelligence. You can’t let other people define you. You’ve gotta put yourself in your own words.”   
Abraham has done that. Here’s an excerpt from his “St. Bullshit College,” a piece he performed – sick and fantastic – at the festival:

Shakespeare dun made up all kinds of words but the way Black people talk is called “slang” or “ebonics”
Many schools treat young people like They ignorant/But I tell ya right now, it’s the school hooked on phonics.
It’s them that hear past the sound of the words, while all meaning and relevance goes by unheard?

Comments on this story are now closed