Sage Morgan-Hubbard ’05 strode through the Van Wickle Gates as a freshman in 2001, determined to join a campus poetry group at her new school. Fresh off A Day On College Hill filled with open-mic poetry and an encounter with a Providence slam poetry team, she had hoped to find similar opportunities at Brown — but she quickly realized that no spoken word poetry group existed.
Undeterred, Morgan-Hubbard — along with classmates Misty Wilson ’11 and Laura Green ’06 — enlisted the help of the Student Activities Office to create WORD!, a student-led spoken word poetry group. Open to students at both Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design, WORD! began holding meetings in the basement of Churchill House.
“It was a really democratic space” meant to include as many voices as possible, Morgan-Hubbard said.
In the early days of WORD!, Morgan-Hubbard worked with Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Theatre Arts and Performance Studies Elmo Terry-Morgan to classify WORD! as a Group Independent Study Project, which allowed students on financial aid to receive a course credit for attending meetings. Soon after, the group — which Morgan-Hubbard said prioritized amplifying voices of color — began to grow.
Today, WORD! remains the only spoken word poetry group on Brown’s campus, and its emphasis on inclusivity persists.
“(WORD!) offers a space to be heard,” said Co-President Kris Cho ’22. “It’s a community space where you feel seen — not just cared for, but centered in care.”
The group’s active membership ranges from ten to 40, and before the pandemic, WORD! “would do about two shows ... each year, one at the end of each semester,” Cho said. “We had members from the club perform pieces that they’d written for the semester or were interested in sharing with the community,” she added.
For members, spoken word poetry provides an opportunity that other social and academic spaces might not.
“I went to a majority white, very conservative high school in the area that I grew up in,” said Co-President of WORD! Abbi Page ’22. “Slam poetry was the way in which I voiced myself and was allowed to talk about the issues that I needed to confront and make a reality.”
“To understand what WORD! brings to Brown, you have to understand what Brown doesn’t always offer for students of color,” Cho said, speaking to her experience as a concentrator in the white-dominated field of history. “As an Asian American writer, I think it's important to have a space that acknowledges the importance of positionality.”
From its inception in 2001, WORD! was designed as an accessible space for all students, regardless of their experience or desire to perform.
“It's okay if you don't want to perform, (you can)... still be part of WORD! because it’s just a safe space to tell your story and to write and experiment and have fun,” Morgan-Hubbard said.
According to Cho, the medium of spoken word poetry — along with its competition-based counterpart, slam — lends itself to newcomers.
“Slam started off as a bar game, actually. The idea is that the ideal judge is a random person off the street, who knows nothing about poetry,” Cho said. “There’s something really liberating in terms of not trying to meet standards that are so often entrenched in a lot of academic writing or other forms of classical poetry.”
For Page, a large part of WORD!’s appeal is the community itself. “There’s this bond that brings us together and so there are … memories of us having parties on the weekend and making jokes together,” Page said. “All these little bloopers and behind-the-scenes moments … (make) me really feel connected to the group.”
Throughout its time on College Hill, WORD! has remained relatively under-the-radar. It has no website, and most of WORD!’s projects don’t include other campus groups — largely to protect the sanctity of the space that the group provides for its members, according to Page.
“In my time with WORD!, we have not done much collaboration,” Page said. “It's really been a very close-knit community and every week we come in and we really intimately share our details. So to bring in another group is a factor in that safety of the environment.”
“We don't really give out the Zoom link until we know someone's really interested and really wants to be a part of it … for keeping it a safe space,” Page said.
Although meetings are reserved for members of WORD!, the group is currently working to host more open performances in the future.
“In the last couple years, WORD! has been trying to do more public-facing events,” Cho said. “We did this one event called ‘Mic in the Dark’ where we have an open mic, except it was pitch black, and the speakers were anonymous. That was a really exciting experience.”
“We're thinking of putting together a pre-recorded or pre-planned film rather than a live performance to release out for showcase,” Page said. “We're trying to find different ways to visually create with our poems.”
Twenty years after Sage-Hubbard created WORD!, she reflected on the work done by Cho, Page and other past leaders of the group.
“I've been very proud of them. They constantly create a space for students to speak their truth. We went from being barely known about compared to other organizations at Brown to now being a real staple,” Morgan-Hubbard said. “It’s just a really beautiful space.”
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