Seven things that make Ghosts so special

1. Intimacy

That atmosphere in a packed hall becomes intimate enough for a girl in the audience to ask legendary American rapper-poet Black Ice the question: If poetry equals love, as he had just exclaimed, did it ever break your heart? Black Ice, the man who strings his associations together faster than Halbe Zijlstra strings his stupidities, and in rhyme too, looked at the girl dumbfounded. He started cackling, stammered some more, but then had to acknowledge with a broad grin that this question was more beautiful than his answer could ever be.

2. Physical pleasure

That it can be a physical pleasure to spend an evening listening intently to smoothly fired, meaning-heavy lines of poetry. This, of course, has to do with the fact that with most of the performers at Spoken, the hip-hop groove resounds even if the beats do not sound here, that they and many of the visitors are dressed as if at a casual fashion show or premiere, that the evening at times has the eroticism that arises in moments of deep kindred spirits, but it also has to do with something else. Something harder to pinpoint, but undeniably going on. On Spoken features poets for whom the poem is more than words, more than thoughts on paper. More than thinking, in other words. It is also about voice, face, sound, gestures, rhythm, body: about the whole poet, not just her letters. It is about attitude, attitude to life - and very often literally the survival strategy of someone who needs to be heard. Not just read, but really seen and really heard. Completely. Without reservation or prejudice.

And you feel it. The commitment creates concentration, the pace creates adrenaline, the bravado creates oxitocyne - the hormone that produces affection. And thus, if you are in the audience, for an evening of physical pleasure. The pleasure that is released when supreme concentration is demanded of all your senses.

3. Spirited answers

That questions asked by organiser Blaxtar himself to the poets immediately after their performance, via a big screen on stage, sometimes yield the wittiest answers. Pete Philly hardly had to think about who are the sexiest poets in the Netherlands. Typhoon, he said, and Jules Deelder, of course.

4. Visitors on stage

People submitted their spoken word in advance. When the evening starts, Blaxtar has chosen two. And they suddenly find themselves in front of the full house. The girl with the dark headscarf and radiant smile, who goes through life as Zaii Nog Iets, jumped up and down from excitement for a moment and then popped out a text about the attention of interesting guys and the dilemmas that come with it: how do you show that you are available - or not?

5. Everything is political

That the love, the look in someone's eyes, the attraction and the sexy jokes - that that is all politics here. Political in the sense of power relations: being aware of them, playing with them, challenging them. The poetry in Spoken is seductive one moment, militant the next, and often both at the same time. This is possible, because these poets have learned, and not always by choice, that power speaks in every handshake, every glance, in the undertone of jokes or questions.

By no means all the poets at Spoken are black, nor are the visitors. But black self-consciousness does colour the atmosphere of these evenings. More often than not, the poetry is indebted to the tradition of African-American spoken word. That starts with the natural speaking tone, always talking to your audience, always ready for the questions and answers, spoken or not, that give the performances momentum and openness. From that, it almost naturally rolls out that the poems are mostly about me, about the game between you and me, about the expectations you have of me and I of you, about the way I address myself, define myself and hold my ground amid all those bouncing looks, presuppositions, allegations and ambivalent declarations of love. There is a heightened self-awareness going on in Spoken, you hear the words of people who are extremely alert to the ambiguities in and around themselves. And ultimately, that defines the keynote of the poetry: proud, defiant - voices that know they have to be smarter, faster and more outspoken than others to be heard, to be recognised as a voice.

6. But not boring and abstract

That politics is not boring and abstract, but the name for the struggle for daily survival. We live in a beautiful world where ugly souls push the buttons, says Black Ice in The Ugly Show, his short epic about the neglect of the (black, poverty-stricken) victims of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The world is beautiful, worth living in, but it is not usually the most beautiful people who are at the controls. And when the devastation hits, when the roofs have been ripped off houses and the outward appearance of everyday life blown away, it is not just human lives that lie naked and undisguised on the streets. The power relations are also bare on display, unmasked are the looking-away politicians. What remains is the mourning, the unsolicited intimacy after the storm, the realisation that everything is fragile.

So we know this place, for we have glanced more times than we'd like to share into eyes that stare with nothing there behind them but an unfulfilled wish and an unconscious yearning for life
though death rests comfortably beside us.

That is the voice of New Orleans-based Sunni Patterson: the same head-swaying, light-metallic voice as Nikki Giovanni, the icon of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s. Here, she stands on stage with poetry that lies between indictment, flirtation, life lesson and love song - and with her baby in a sling wide awake at her breast. She talks to herself, to her little girl and to the audience as if we are sitting on the veranda with her, when the evening breeze brings coolness after a day of heat and outrage. Sunni Patterson has seen the ugly souls at work and looked them straight in the eye, but she wants past the anger. Her motto: To get beyond the enemy-centred life. Effortlessly, she draws the packed audience along on her journey towards self-confidence and reconciliation. It would not work, in this down-to-earth country, if the evenings of Spoken had not already created the sensibility for this elegant form of political self-awareness, and if her language had not sounded so nimble, so light and open.

7. Commitment

That Spoken gets them together: the very young Zaiis and the living legends of All Def Poetry, the conscious Amsterdammers in their casual chic and greying fifties like me. That a common historical consciousness emerges in which Jules Deelder and Nikki Giovanni both have their natural place. That you unmask power with your daughter on your arm. That you bring language to full life precisely by reducing it to its bare essence. That you can become gently glowing happy with the deepest seriousness.