In So Many Words

First there was Homer. And then the Beats.

And now come all the rest.

“Shouts & Whispers,” Tuesday through April 11, brings together voices from every area code in the city for a three-day festival of spoken-word performances at Cal State Northridge. But don’t let the academic setting fool you: This is no staid, ivory-tower blank verse.

Is it poetry? Yes. Is it storytelling? Yes. Is it performance art? Yes. All that and more.

Producer Kathi Martin, a visual artist and CSUN instructor, was intrigued by the way traditional modes of performance seemed to be melting together. Poets are performing with props, she said, while musicians and actors are writing poetry. With this in mind, she invited to Northridge a dozen performers--including Luis Alfaro, Ellyn Maybe, Eric Priestly and Liz Belile--who more often perform in Venice or downtown.

“I want the community to understand it’s alternative in nature, not commercial. It’s leading edge,” Martin said. None of the performers are old-fashioned, she added. Some have a biting undertone of political commentary, others lean toward urban confessionals, while a few concentrate on wacky humor.

The only phrase broad enough to contain all that, it seems,is “spoken word.” The name was coined by record producer Harvey Kubernik in the 1970s, inspired by the “spoken arts” bins in records stores that contained work by anyone from Robert Frost to Richard Pryor.

Kubernik has been making spoken-word recordings for 20 years and recently produced CDs of Martin’s poetry and a compilation of Los Angeles poets called “Internal Journal Vol. II.” He’s become sort of a clearinghouse--he uses the phrase “organic advisor”--for local spoken-word performers. He helped Martin pick the performers for “Shouts & Whispers” and said the group is a “splendid display of the diversity” in the Los Angeles poetry scene.

Open-mike nights and poetry slams have infused a lot of energy into spoken-word shows, he said, but the direction seems to be toward festivals like “Shouts & Whispers” or the recent “Nuyorican Cafe Poets Live!,” presented by the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts.

It helps that universities are opening their campuses to these performances, he said. Kubernik said he remembers a time not so long ago when the suggestion that these people read at CSUN would elicit something less than enthusiasm. “Nobody was interested unless [performers] had a master’s or a PhD,” he said.

Among the performers Tuesday will be poet-playwright-columnist Alfaro. He grew up near downtown Los Angeles and much of his writing reflects that experience. Still, he said, he performs more often in other cities. “It’s hard to make money here as a poet, in relation to other towns,” said Alfaro, co-director of the Latino Theater Initiative at the Mark Taper Forum. “Although we have a huge poetry scene, poetry as a whole is not valued in the larger society as a way to make money.”

But Alfaro is encouraged by performances like “Shouts & Whispers,” in which spoken-word artists are the focus, not squeezed in between bands, like he was during Lollapalooza.

Poet Willie Sims, of Lakeview Terrace, likewise is excited by the recent attention that poets have gotten on television, including a Bill Moyers’ series and the PBS program “The United States of Poetry.” Sims says it is similar to what the Beatles did for rock music--after hearing it, people want to do it themselves.

Sims’ own work is social satire in the form of humorous stories. Among the pieces he’ll perform Tuesday night are “F-Words: A Frightfully Frank Feminist Fable About Fornication” and “Solo Flight,” about a kid who plays rap music on a Stradivarius violin.

Erin Aubry said she will perform new work Wednesday evening. Her pieces, frequently untitled, are a contrast to Sims’, capturing moments--like an unexpected marriage proposal in a bathroom--in lyrical vignettes.

She’s glad Martin convinced her to drive to CSUN from her Mid-Wilshire home for the festival. “You get so set in your little corner in Los Angeles that you don’t go out of it. Artists especially need to venture outside,” she said. “Black poets and Latino poets--we tend to think we have to stay in our respective communities. We don’t cross-fertilize much. But good things always come of it.”

Martin knows that once people come to “Shouts & Whispers” they’ll understand what spoken word is about. But until then, she’s a little worried. “How do I explain that everyone who comes get mesmerized?” she said. “It’s not like walking into a snobby art gallery.” She repeated an observation her brother once made: “The difference between poetry and spoken word is that in spoken word they move their arms around.”

DETAILS

* WHAT: “Shouts & Whispers.”

* WHEN: 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday; noon April 11.

* WHERE: Tuesday, Wednesday at CSUN Art Dome, 18111 Nordhoff St.; April 11 in Thousand Oaks Room of the University Student Union.

* HOW MUCH: Free.

* CALL: (818) 885-2156.