Spoken Word – My Winning Entry

“A broad designation for poetry intended for performance. Spoken word can encompass or contain elements of rap, hip-hop, storytelling, theatre, and jazz, rock, blues, and folk music.” – Poetry Foundation

Blogchatter opened new doors of vlogging through its event “Lights Camera Chatter.” They come up with new things and the best part is they prepare you completely through the various workshops they conduct all throughout the month. This event too had experts like Siddharth Mishra, Akash Banerjee, Prateek Sharma, Kartik Nijhawan and Saumya Kulshreshtha conduct Live sessions on social media and teach us and boost our confidence to face the camera.

I was interested in this event because I wanted to learn how to grow my existing YouTube channel. Though I have already uploaded around twenty-five videos on my channel, I have myself never faced the camera. So, when they opened the contest entries, I immediately sent mine.

The actual drama began when I emerged as one of the winners and was asked to perform my poetry for a Live audience. The truth is, when the camera goes Live, you go numb and dead! When you practice it before a camera, it’s a different thing but when you perform it Live, it’s a different story altogether.

Blogchatter helped us get accustomed to the camera and the technicalities in the rehearsals and then came the D-Day. Behind the scenes, my family was sitting glued to the Live Facebook Video, trying their best to guard my toddler from entering my room! In my locked room, I was all set, keeping in mind the lights, camera angle and the best background I could manage.

Then, began the finals that we all were waiting for. Suchita from Blogchatter introduced the Live audience to the fun-filled evening of Spoken Word. One by one the winners performed their masterpieces. I was overwhelmed to see my friends and relatives cheering me up and waiting for my turn. I too couldn’t wait anymore.

I was introduced next, the spotlight was on me, there was a lag in the video so, I waited for a few seconds and then started reciting my poetry. What an experience it was!

I wanted to add some drama to my poetry so, it was not just a recitation but with the use of some props as well. You have to watch my YouTube video to see what I did. I finished the poem but was taken aback to hear from Suchita that I dropped from the Live video. Immediately I started receiving messages from my friends and family members asking what happened and why did I drop, something that I didn’t even realize.

This happens, even when you are well prepared, you can do nothing about the technical glitches. I was given another chance to perform my poetry but alas, it dropped again.

I was the saddest, angry on the wi-fi I was using and perplexed of what just happened. I kept myself locked for a while and didn’t receive any call. I watched the recorded Live video to understand what happened. I felt bad for the audience who were eagerly waiting to see me perform.

I couldn’t think of anything but later that night, I took one of the suggestions seriously and that was to upload my video. After my kids went to sleep, I logged in again and went through the videos that I had recorded earlier. I uploaded one of them on my YouTube channel and also thanked my well-wishers who took efforts to comment for me while I was Live.

Everyone was happy to see my YouTube video and I was happy that I finally entered the world of vlogging. All thanks to Blogchatter for instilling the confidence in me to face the camera. With this, my YouTube channel now has a piece from my blog and I plan to upload more in the future.

If you wish to see my winning Spoken Word performance, you can do it anytime now.

Also, subscribe to my channel to be the first one to be notified when I upload my next video. Can you guess what would be my next upload, a music video, a vlog or something new? Comment NOW!