Master Black Chakra’s 3 P’s of Poetry: Power, Potency, and Pen
Black Chakra (aka Jacob Mayberry) is a master of the 3 P’s: power, potency, and pen. And he proves it with everything he does as a spoken word artist, emcee, teacher, and multi-slam champion (be it National Slam, Texas Grand Slam, or a virtual slam). He’s working hard to become the “Spoken Word Dave Chapelle” with streamed performances on platforms like Amazon Prime and Netflix.
Poet Life Podcast sat down with Black Chakra to learn what he means by “power, potency, and pen” as a way to become a master poet. So let’s learn from the master!
Note: Everything below is either directly quoted or paraphrased from Black Chakra.
1. Power
Power is aligned with performance. When you are on a stage, how encapsulating are you?
Soft-spoken poets have their space, but slam is naturally explosive. Poems can have soft-spoken, calm moments, but there also need to be explosive moments. You need to learn how to turn that on and off to give a captive performance.
The power of how you wield your performance is important.
How well do you make eye contact?
If you don’t want to make direct eye contact, you can scan the back of the room. It’ll look like you’re making eye contact and keep your audience engaged. But if you can, make eye contact because eyes are the window to the soul. So make eye contact when you say something powerful because it connects in a different way.
What are you doing in your performance?
Peaks and valleys are your friend. There are lines where you can be calm, lines where you could be loud, lines where you need to be somber. Every emotion of every line needs to translate through your performance.
A poem should not be one voice, one note. It should be many voices, many notes. It’s a composition of music.
What did you want me to feel?
If the point of the poem was for me to feel burdened, and I feel burdened, the poem was successful. If the point of the pome was for me to feel happy, and I feel burdened, you need to redo the poem. You have to add the part where I was supposed to feel happy, and do it better.
All of that is part of the power. Learn how to use your voice, wield your words. Learn the art of the pause and how to master your emotions on stage. Learn how to take up a stage, how to move.
That’s what “power” means.
2. Potency
Potency has to do with the subjects and the concepts of your poem.
Two types of subjects for your poem
There are microcosm poems and macrocosm poems. A really great poem can be both microcosm and macrocosm (aka micro-macro) at the same time. Micro-macro poems are not always necessary but are powerful when done well. Listen to Rudy Franscico’s poem “Adrenaline Rush” (or “Volcano Surfing”) as an example of a micro-macro poem.
Microcosm poems are completely about you and your experiences. For example, if Black Chakra is writing a poem about his relationship with his father, it’s a microcosm poem. Even if an audience member can relate to it or has experienced something similar, it’s a microcosm poem because it’s about his personal relationship.
Macrocosm poems are about the world or society. For example, police brutality. When Black Chakra writes a poem about police brutality, it’s a macrocosm poem because he personally has never been beaten or assaulted by a police officer. Even if it can seemingly be a microcosm poem, it’s a macrocosm piece because it’s about the larger scale issues of a problematic system and country.
Knowing the difference between micro and macrocosm poems helps you know where the poem’s potency comes from. But you also need to think through how you write the piece.
Concepts matter in poetry
Black Chakra is not the first (or the last) person to write a football poem. But his poem, “Pass,” performed so well because of where he performed it (Texas A&M, the football mecca of America), how he performed it (the power we talked about above), and how he wrote it (what we’ll focus on next).
He took a football concept, strengthened it with his writing skills, and performed it in exactly the right location with the right power. He wrote a piece that fit the times (e.g., the Kaepernick situation in 2018) and will most likely be scarily relevant 10 years from now. He thought about the concept’s shelf life. He questioned, can I pull this piece off the shelf 15 years from now and will it still have the same effect that it has today? Potency and concept can do that.
Quick “Pepsi Gatorade” lesson on concept writing
Take one container (he uses a Gatorade bottle) and fill it with slips of paper that have common topics written on them. For example, these are common topics like depression, police brutality, relationships.
Then in a second container (he uses a Pepsi bottle), fill it with slips of paper with uncommon things, like diapers, sofa rash, dragons, broken clocks.
Now, you draw one slip from each container and that’s your concept. Below is the conceptual piece he started based on Gatorade (relationships) and Pepsi (sofa rash):
Never before did I scratch my back because I didn’t know anybody had it.
But I didn’t know that I could love someone into a star. Into a rash.
They say, if someone lays on a sofa for too long, with no shirt on, they will get this nasty gash called sofa rash, and it is so ferocious that you will scratch for hours.
The way she left herself on my body was more of a scar than lipstick.
– Black Chakra
The Pepsi Gatorade lesson is a quick way to teach concept and potency. It’s about discovering how creative you can get about a topic someone has already written about. How are you able to flip it? What makes it interesting?
This brings us to the pen.
3. Pen
To begin explaining the strength of the pen, ask yourself these questions:
How powerful can the writing be when you put the power and potency aside?
How well can you write?
If you were put in a writing competition of any caliber (essays, novels, short stories, poetry), could you win?
How flexible is your pen?
You have to know the poetic devices. Similes, metaphors, hyperboles, double entendres, alliterations, erasures, anthropomorphic poems, personas, personification, etc. Can you wield these weapons? Do you know how they exist in your writing? Are you intentional when you write a line?
Understanding the art form and knowing the strength of your pen will help you to know how to fix or redo a poem or line when it does perform the way you intended.
Black Chakra makes the point that he’s not writing poems for everyone who hears it. He’s writing for the scholars who are going to study it and take influence from it. He studies the art form and learns the devices to build confidence in his writing.
You also need to evaluate how much time you spend writing. Practice and consistency make the difference. A key to achieving consistency is to debunk the myth of writer’s block.
It’s not writer’s block. It’s dope block.
There’s no such thing as writer’s block because you are the thing that’s blocking you. You are able to get out of your own way. If you’re worried about how the poem comes out, you’re not experiencing writer’s block. It’s dope block.
This means you are worried about how it sounds to people, and therefore don’t think it sounds good to you. All you have to do is edit it until it does sound good. Editing is still writing.
And if you feel like you just don’t have anything to write about, try the Pepsi Gatorade method. Maybe there are poems you’re not ready to write, that’s fine but don’t stop writing. Every poem you write doesn’t have to be THE poem. Sometimes you’re going to write 15 poems, and 15 of them will be trash. But the 16th poem is the best. Not every poem is a great poem, but you write them to keep the motion of writing.
This is what strengthens your pen. The pen changes everything. Black Chakra isn’t outdoing poets because he can out-perform them or because he has better subjects. It’s the pen. It doesn’t matter how powerful or potent your poem is, if the pen doesn’t back it up. Strengthen your pen, and the confidence will follow to aid in your power and potency.
“It’s hard work, and I’m willing to do it because sacrifice is the art of being great.”
– Black Chakra
To close it out, Black Chakra leaves us with this note:
“Your story is worth telling because your story is not yours alone. Every artist who is a poet, has been given the gift of saying these things and writing these things as a light. … Statistically, more people suffer from stage fright than the fear of death. Which means, more people would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. And because you have found the ability to do this, your story is important. … Your story is worth being told, and we all need to hear it.”
Black Chakra is a spoken word and hip-hop artist whose has been a national poetry slam champion, Texas Grand Slam champion, Southern Fried slam champion and a plethora of others too long to list. Black Chakra embodies the city of Baltimore through aggressive performance and incredible writing. What he takes the most pride in is being a youth poetry teacher for Dewmore Baltimore. He helps Baltimore youth cultivate their talent and showcase it on National stages. Follow Black Chakra on social media: @BlackChakra88
