by Darcy Giff ord What happens when we try to speak for
each other, to give voice to someone else’s struggle? Does it matter if we mean well?
For poets Darius Simpson and Scout
Bostley, both students at Eastern, the answers are clear. Their performance poem “Lost Voices,” which took third place in the 2015 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational, shows what happens when white privilege and male privilege trick people into thinking they understand what others are feeling. As Simpson sums it up, “This is what you
look like when you’re speaking for someone.” To perform the poem, Simpson and
Bostley begin by taking a big breath, glancing at each other, and switching microphones. Bostley, a white woman, recites, “The fi rst day I realized I was black, it was 2000” while Simpson, an African-American man, mouths the words. They continue this way, with Bostley’s fi rst-person lines about racism interwoven with Simpson’s descriptions of sexual assault and patriarchy. But the two speak the fi nal line together: “The problem with speaking up for each other is that everyone is left without a voice.” All of the lines they speak for each other, the poets explain,
come out of things they experienced or observed. The perpetuation of racism and sexism, and increased attention to
“The problem with speaking up for each other is that everyone is left without a voice.”
violence against women and black men, led the two to explore ways to be supportive of other people—as well as the limitations of that support. Their blunt depictions of racism and sexism have resonated beyond anyone’s expectations. Almost a year after the pair performed “Lost Voices” in competition in March 2015, the poem is still reaching new audiences, thanks to YouTube. The Huffi ngton Post ran a feature on the poets and linked to the video; Michigan Radio’s “Stateside with Cynthia Canty” did an extended interview. And the YouTube video itself has gone viral, with more than 3 million views. The popularity of “Lost Voices” has been
a surprise to Simpson and Bostley, who have written several poems together and almost
didn’t perform this one at the competition. They’ve been gratifi ed by the number of people who have told them, “I totally know what you are talking about. I totally had that happen to me.” And that is their task, as they understand it. Bostley told
Canty that the job of the poet is “to write and speak for the people who can’t do it themselves.” Simpson completed the thought.
Poets, he said, are “to bring voice to the voiceless and to stand for something larger than ourselves.” 3
photos by Eva Menezes 18 Eastern | WINTER 2016
View the video at
emich.edu/lostvoices
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