Session 2 of Go Back & Fetch It shifted the energy at Rondo Library from workshop to a rehearsal room.

Poet, performer, and organizer MC Tish Jones led fellows through an afternoon that was less about talking about poetry and more about embodying poetry.

Tish Jones is an award winning poet, emcee and Hip Hop Theater artist from Saint Paul, MN. Her work explores themes of Black love, liberation, politics, and Afro-Futurism. Across two decades, her work has been exhibited throughout the US and abroad. Her work is featured in We Are Meant to Rise, A Moment of Silence, Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota and more.

Jones began the session by asking each fellow to choose one line from a poem they’d written. With that single line as an anchor, she coached the group through a series of performance drills, some of which got the fellows up and out of their seats to deliver their lines from different spots in the room. Other drills involved injecting intentional pauses into the line, or establishing the emotional tone of the line…and then reading it with the polar opposite tone. For some, this exercise unlocked new possibilities for their lines; for others it clarified why the original tone mattered so much.

From there, Jones led the group in a tongue twisting exercise to practice diction, memory and pairing specific words with hand gestures.

“Billy Button baked a batch of buttered biscuits - but - if Billy Button baked a batch of buttered biscuits - were - are the batch of buttered biscuits Billy Button baked?”

As fellows tried to sync up the language with the movement, it became a playful and chaotic lesson in embodying a spoken word performance.

Throughout the session, Jones made a deliberate effort to center Blackness, honoring the intentions of Go Back and Fetch It as a space for Black writers, always drawing the group back to where we are speaking from. The session felt technically focused while carrying the deeper undercurrent of reclaiming our voice and space.

One of the lasting takeaways from Jones’ session was her challenge to step away from the stereotypical “spoken word voice” - the rhythm and tone many people associate with coffee-shop open mics and staged slam performances.

She reminded fellows that there is no single correct way to sound like a poet. The work doesn’t have to be delivered in a familiar cadence to be powerful. Poetry and spoken word supports all forms of musicality.

For some, that echoed lessons from other performers in the Go Back & Fetch It orbit - artists like GBaFI Alumni Dralandra Larkins, whose performances feel powerful and distinctly her own. Jones’ session gave fellows the permission to honor the the embodiment of our work without disappearing into common tropes.

Session 2 with MC Tish Jones invited Go Back & Fetch It to stand up, speak loud, and let their voice take up space, on the page and on the stage.