Raise your hand if you had fun with last month’s poetry slam, the Golden Shovel.

For me, part of the fun was going through other people’s poetry, looking for those perfect lines that spoke to me, and then figuring out how I could speak through them. When you find a poem that you really like, one important thing to do as a poet is deconstruct it. Figure out what the poet was doing. See if you can do it too.

That’s what we’re doing in this month’s slam, which I’m informally calling The Pitch.

We’ll be focusing on a poem by the youngest-ever winner of the Forward prize for poetry, Danez Smith. You might know them as the author of  “not an elegy for Mike Brown” and “alternate names for black boys,” both published in the wake of the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, by a police officer, or for  “dear white America” a poem that went viral on YouTube. That same ethos informs their collection “Don’t Call Us Dead,” self-described as “black, queer loudmouth work” and concerning not only race but their HIV-positive diagnosis.

If you’re finding all of this a little much, I suggest you spend some time with their poetry. It’s a lot, too. Where stories or essays will make you think, poetry – good poetry – has a way of getting down into the hindbrain and changing how you feel. It’s worth reading.

But for this month we’ll be focusing on a different poem to emulate, one that’s more conducive to bringing your own experience to the format: Two Movies. Specifically, PITCH FOR A MOVIE: LION KING IN THE HOOD.

You probably haven’t followed all those links yet, but let’s look at the last one for a minute and read the poem.

PITCH FOR A MOVIE: LION KING IN THE HOOD

1. cast list

Mufasa & his absence played by every father ever

Simba played by the first boy you know who died too young

Sarabi played by the woman in church who has forgot the taste of praise
in favor of the earth that hold her boy captive

Nala played by the girl crying on the swing for her valentine who now date the dirt

Timon & Pumbaa played by Ray-Ray & Man-Man, the joy of not-dead friends

Zazu played by the ghost of James Baldwin

Rafiki played by a good uncle with a bad habit, his lust for rocks on his lips

Scar played by the world, the police, the law & its makers, the rope-colored hands

The endless army of hyenas played by a gust
choked tight with bullet shells, the bullets themselves
now dressed in a boy

2. Opening Credits

brought to you by Disney & dead aunts

brought to you on a platter, an apple in the lion-boy’s mouth

brought to you on a terrible boat, reeking of shit & an unnamed sick

brought to you on a tree branch heavy with tree-colored man

3. Opening Scene: The Circle of [interrupted]Life

Nants ingonyama bagithi baba
Sithi uhhmm [BANG] ingonyama

Nants ingonyama [a mother calls for her boy] bagithi baba
Sithi [BANG BANG] uhhmm ingonyama

Ingonyama Siyo [the sound of blood leaving a boy] Nqoba

Ingonyama  [a mother’s knees fall into a puddle 
of the blood she made herself]
Ingonyama [the slow song of a spirit rising]nengw’ enamabala
[the spirit is confused about where its body went]

4. Song: Oh I just can’t wait to be king

this is the part where they realize that black people dream
& our blood is indeed blood & our teeth, teeth
& the music is loud because the field was wide & the field was long
& we dreamed on simple things: shoes, our children back

this is the part where the racist cuts off his tongue, his wet, pink repent
he gives his eyes & his hands & anything that has ever assumed
a black body a black & burnable thing. He gives himself to the lions
& the lions feast & the lions are still a metaphor for black boys
& the boys, full of fear turned into dinner, fall asleep & they dream

yes, yes, they really do dream.

5. Song: Be Prepared

for the stampede of tiny lead beast

for the jury not to flinch

for the hands, wild in your wildless hair

for the darkest toll, your double down to get half

for the man, ecstatic with triggers

to spread your legs while they search for drugs there

for the drug there, for their mouths to ask that big question

to hear your history told to you over & over & over

for it never to change.

6. Scene:  Mufasa Dies at the hands of his brother Scar

What did you expect to be different?
The hood (according to whiteness & the sadness of this film) is any jungle:

a brother kills a brotha

the left behind body a forgettable meal
for the dark, white birds circling above

7. Montage: Timon & Pumbaa teach Simba a music other than the blues

clip 1: the boy getting older in spite of everything

clip 2: the boy & the boy-friends smoking blunts
for once something else brown & on fire

clip 3: the boy who would be king with his mouth
in another man’s throne

clip 4: Timon & Simba singing
down each other’s throat

clip 5: Timba calling Pumbaa a faggot & they all laugh

clip 6: murals of all the dead friends’ faces

clip 7: funeral songs. small caskets

clip 8: red, blue, periwinkle, yellow, black, & blood-maroon rags

clip 9: flowers & picture frames on the side walk

clip 10: shot the boys laughing anyway

clip 11: shot the boys laughing in the sun

clip 12: shot the boys laughing in the rain

clip 13: shot of the boys not being shot

8. Scene: Simba comes home to kill his uncle

& even here, a black man
kills a black man, this awful cartoon, all the children cry
blood until their bodies are just bone on skin.

roll the credits, I must go weep. Why does Disney remind us
what we have learned:

– one black light swallows another so easy
– killing is unavoidable as death
– the king’s throne is wet with his brother’s blood
– the queen suffers too but gets no name

9. closing credits

say the name
of the first boy
you love
who died.
say it
& don’t cry.
say it
& love
the air
around your tongue.
say it
& watch
the fire come.
say it
& watch the son rise.

So how do YOU write a poem like this?

Well, first of all, we’re not going to make you write nine stanzas of it, although you can. There are only four mandatory stanzas for your Pitch: The casting call, and three scenes.

So step one is find a movie, and find a parallel event in your own life (or another movie, or the news) that you could make vaguely track to the movie, the way the Lion King is actually Hamlet for kids. The event doesn’t have to be of worldshaking importance: it could be a first day at school, moving house, having a child, or any number of things. Even your first bike ride ever is fair game.

Next, identify the three major scenes of the movie, the ones that give you the best sense of the plot (I pick on Lord of the Rings a lot, but for that I’d use the meeting of the Fellowship in Rivendell, probably Boromir’s death that splits the Fellowship, and then the final battle/Frodo throwing the One Ring into the volcano). I’m having you do this before the casting call for a REASON. If you need more scenes than three to tell your story, that’s fine too! Or you could pick a musical, and do one brief stanza for every song.

Now think about what characters need to be in those important scenes. For those characters, you’ll cast the characters (and metaphors, and objects) that you need to tell your own story. So if I was telling the Lord of the Rings, but I was talking about my first bike ride, Sauron would be played by the hill behind the house. Samwise by the backpedal-style brakes. Frodo by myself. Boromir by my dad, who let go. Stuff like that. We’re only going to require you to have three characters, but use as many as you need to tell your story.

OKay! So you’ve got your casting call and your at-least-three scenes. Now what?

For me, the first step would be the titles. I’d put in the casting call, and title each of the scenes with a short description of the actual movie scene. Then I’d fill in those scenes, trying to keep myself brief. Part of what makes Smith’s PITCH FOR A MOVIE work is that the audience already knows the story, so they just have to remind you periodically of the characters and you’ll do a lot of the work drawing those parallels.

So let’s see what that would look like, briefly, because let’s face it Danez Smith is a lot to live up to but I’m not, so go ahead and do better than me.

PITCH FOR A MOVIE: LORD OF THE BIKES

Casting call:

Sauron played by the hill behind the house.

Saruman played by the gravel on the hill

Samwise Gamgee played by a set of backpedal-style brakes.

Gimli and Legolas by the front and back wheels of a red bike slightly too large

Frodo played by a girl in taped-together glasses.

Boromir played by her father

Gandalf and the orcs played by a series of after-school specials in which the child is always grateful to the parent for letting go even though it hurts.

Scene 1: The Gathering of the Fellowship in Rivendell

The hill is too tall, even though it is short enough to run down
The bike is red even under a grey sky and the spokes chatter. The brakes hold it, hold it, and insist that the whole remain together.

Scene 2: Boromir is gone and the Fellowship broken: Frodo and Sam depart for Mordor

When there are no more hands gravity will take what’s left.

When there is no more gravity, when the pedals are too fast and the world is a blur in the space of a foot, everything has begun to come apart already.

Scene 3: As Saruman’s realm in Isengard crumbles and the Fellowship confronts the orc army, Samwise carries Frodo to the edge of Mount Doom

Have you ever noticed that speed
and turns

are incompatible
that nothing can save you from two-rocks-high, stacked and immutable as Eagles in their own way, a white handprint of chalk and dust marring them

Have you ever noticed that if you shove hard enough backward you will stop
sideways
upside down
but stopped
and waiting to take you to the grey havens for dinner is Boromir after all

There, see? That wasn’t intimidating in the least. You could have written that. And that’s how you can take inspiration from a really good poem, analyze the literary devices it used, and experiment with it in your own work.

Let’s see if I can break it down a little more. The casting call is pretty self-explanatory, I think. Then for the scenes I tried to track the movie scenes to the rising and falling action (literally, ouch) of coasting down a hill on a bike. That’s pretty much it. It was actually harder to make the stanzas short enough than to find the words to fill them up.

While for the purpose of this slam we only require a casting call, three characters, and three scenes, you’re absolutely welcome to expand on that base like I just did. (You’ll probably find you need more characters. And actually, that’s the part I had the most fun with.)

Good luck – I hope you enjoy trying this framing device out in your poetry!