Poetry+at+Level+2+Stuffy+and+irrelevant+or+empowering+and+choice

**Hello.**

 **Here are a few videos which give you an idea about the artist on which my presentation is largely focused. The first clip is by a Slam Poet named Andrea Gibson. In class we listened and watched her performances before beginning our exploration of Sage Francis, whose clips follow and whose work I used in preparation for 2.4**

 **The presentation focuses largly on the music of an American rapper named Sage Francis. His music is based on the flaws he sees in a largely material and consumer focused society.**** He exposes these flaws in a society he sees as being a plausible masquerade. **

** Our society encourages a culture of chasing perfection. It is one where we become so concerned with meeting normative expectation that we risk losing ourselves. Our soul, the meaning of what is real, genuine feeling and the essence of what is true is lost in our quest for perfection. **

** looking a certain way, dressing a certain way, maintaining a lifestyle which projects an image of success and living in a certain way reassures observes that you are conforming to mainstream ideals and living up to the pressure that society dictates. **

** These are some of the facets of culture that Sage Francis explores. He encourages his listeners to realise perhaps the extent to which they are manipulated or brainwashed by popular culture and how much we have lost touch as a result of this. **

** Upon reflection the listener is left with only one question: What is at stake by participating in a culture obsessed with its perception? **

** This is a motivation common in the rhetoric of the Slam Poerty genre and seen in the poetry and literature of the beat poets. **

And this is Andrea Gibson. She is amazing. This is Slam poetry

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Disclaimer: I am conscious of the naughty words in this song. It's worth mentioning that I do not promote this language in the classroom and edited it out of the music that was played in class in order to avoid offense...and letters from disgruntled parents

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