Spoken Word

What are you thoughts on Spoken Word? Does anyone perform their poetry? Or do you think it is a lesser art form?

i'm not sure if i'm answering your question, but I appreciate poetry more once i've seen or heard the poet read it. One of the things i remember allen ginnsberg teaching is one should write how they speak, that a poem should be readable aloud.
if there is a seperate type of poetry called Spoken poetry, then i'm not aware of it. i know there's poetry slams where people rhyme or scat, and the hwatnot: i'm not sure that that's not poetry, there's an edge to it and a delicious sense of "in the moment" that certainly is a craft one has to develop ... i can't say i've heard of any slams that didn't seem formulatic (is that even a word?!) but then again, so does a lot of what passes for poetry these days, even from the best poets.

so, i don't know, i guess.

I don't think it's a lesser art form, but it's a somewhat different one. The few times I've been at a more slam-ish reading, people brought pieces that were more playing up drama & humour and less meditative/introspective kind of stuff. There's a lot of interesting formal things that can be done that render a piece not really "readable aloud." I think Ginsberg is missing out there. And I'm not just talking about concrete poetry. As an example, I've toyed with hypertexty "choose-your-own-adventure" type poems, as well as acrostic poems with stanzas arranged in a grid that can be read top to bottom or left to right, producing a different effect each way. I've messed about with hidden messages in poems (for instance, contained within the first letter of each line). That's all stuff that just doesn't really translate to being read aloud.