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| Now I'd like to bring out Leehee Bee, a hot piece of asymptote on our stage for the first time. |
Reading my poetry is a new kind of "naked"
What performing poetry reveals about language, vulnerability, the fear of being (mis)understood
A few months ago, I [
Lihi Be] stood on a stage in New York City and performed
slam poetry for the first time. The scene was hosted by
Nuyorican Poets' Cafe at the
Bowery Poetry Club, a small, legendary room where decades of poets have stepped up to a microphone and turned their inner worlds into sound.
It's the kind of place where language has history, where words have weight, where the air feels charged from voices that came before.
I remember standing there, waiting my turn,
feeling my heart beating in my throat,
which surprised me.
I’ve spoken in front of rooms before. I’ve guided workshops, taught movement, led
breathwork journeys where people open parts of themselves that are tender and alive.
Holding space for others doesn’t scare me.
But this was different.
This time, I wasn’t holding
material space; I was
the material.
A
poem I wrote alone earlier that morning was about to leave the page and hit the stage, entering a room full of strangers, not through dead ink, but through my living breath, my voice,
my body.
Until that moment, "
poetry" was something I wrote, never something I performed.
When I published my book,
The Self, Reframed, it felt like a big step
outward. Suddenly the poems were technically "public." Someone,
anyone, could order the book, underline a passage, carry a piece of it into her own life.
Butt even then, there was still distance.
The page protected me.
Readers meet a poem alone. They can pause, reread, close the book, throw it in the garbage disposal, flip the switch, make acid-free wood pulp that washes out to sea... That meeting happens quietly, inside their own interior worlds.
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| Shame? We refuse to limit ourselves |
Slam poetry is different:
Spoken word removes the distance. When one
performs a poem, there is no safe distance, no page between the room and the I performing. My breath carries my language. My nervous system becomes part of the delivery. My voice, my pauses, my trembling chest -- all of it becomes part of my poem.
In some ways, it feels easier to be naked than to perform one's own poem, in the woods, with someone you love, in front of Mother Nature, playing pretend it's Adam and Eve in a Sumerian garden.
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| Look, it's the real me! |
I was in New York for a series of gatherings -- one of them
a nude experience I was hosting with the
Füde Experience: a roomful of
naked people exploring
embodiment,
mindful presence, the simplicity of being in our bodies without the usual layers of social armor.
Standing naked in a room with others didn’t feel nearly as vulnerable as standing on this stage.
In fact,
being naked felt surprisingly simple. Source:
a poem is a different kind of naked (seeds of the self)
We're bringing it to Los Angeles
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| "No bikinis! Cover up those shameful bodies...or you are headed for hell!" - Loving Christian |
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| Lihi Be (Benisty) |
AUTHOR: Lihi Be (Benisty), teacher of somatic self-inquiry, breathwork, movement, teacher, mentorship, poetry, summer retreat leader, author of The Self, Reframed. She leads a dynamic blend of somatic practices to navigate emotional landscapes. She is profoundly committed to the poetic art of self-inquiry through breathwork and movement. Her teaching is distinguished by her ability to weave these elements into a cohesive practice that respects the complexity of the human experience. Her poetry serves as a reflective mirror, deepening the themes she navigates in her somatic work and offering an additional avenue for connection and self-discovery. She lives in Los Angeles, California. (Substack, Instagram, FÜDE in LA, Amazon, Facebook, Omega Institute, lihibe.com)
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