“How could you believe that less of you somehow meant more?” asks Sanam Sheriff into the microphone and the off-camera audience breaks out into thunderous applause with shouts of ‘yes.’ It’s the All Def Poetry Slam in Philadelphia and the YouTube video of Sanam performing spoken word in a dark room of similar strangers has no mention of the fact that she would win the Slam, that her poetry would open doors for disturbed teenagers grappling with body image issues and that the daughter of city designer Seema Malhotra would make Bengaluru proud in a competition as many as 8,000 miles away from it.
The Mallya Aditi International alumnus is as adept in playing basketball as she is in speaking poetry that seems to come from the depths of the gut. Breaking down her life as a sophomore at the Bryn Mawr College, Sanam says, “A normal weekday starts with breakfast with a few friends right before class. From class it switches over to my work shift. I’m a tour guide at Bryn Mawr College and I work every other day for a few hours. I have basketball practice from two hours in the evening that’s followed by team dinner. And the night usually closes up with a bunch of friends doing homework in the campus center. I love going to school here. There are so many things to explore and people to meet but I dislike being so far away from Bengaluru. It’s hard to find that same feeling of belonging when there’s such a cultural difference between you and some of your best friends. The cold is also a real bummer.”
Sanam was eight years old when the drawing power of words which rhymed impressed her first. By the time she was sixteen, she was writing poems in her computer every night. From there to the slam that she won has been quite the journey. The poet who loves Andrea Gibson’s work says, “I feel like we all have so much to say and throughout our lives find different ways to say it. When I found spoken word poetry on YouTube I listened and watched video after video and poet after poet. It took me a while before I had enough confidence in myself to believe that I could do it too. I wrote spoken word poetry for a good year before I found the courage to perform it.”
The slam in itself is a space that transcends individual boundaries. Sanam breaks it down for us, “A poetry slam is a conversation. When people in the audience snap, or say “mmmmm” or “yes” to lines in a poem as they’re being performed— it fuels the poet. It was incredible to win. A thing that is commonly said in poetry slams is that the point is not the points, the point is the poetry. So what stayed with me wasn’t the fact that I won, it was people’s reactions to the words and the performance.”
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