“As an artist I go by Scribe. My poetry is a combination of my story, perspective, and getting people to come into experiences with me.”

“When did you first fall in love with spoken word?”

“That’s really hard to say because music is poetry, lyricism is poetry. But, I’d say three or four years ago, just finding it and seeing artists perform it really spoke to me. Their performances told me you can be more and do more than MCing or rapping; you can share you story in a way that is not defined by rules or structure. Poetry is chaos.”

“What has spoken word given to you? taken away?”

“It’s given me assurance in that I matter and what I have to say matters. It’s taken away the ability to be completely ignorant. Listening to other people’s poetry provides me opportunities to learn from other people’s experiences, especially those I have not had before.”

“What motivates you to write? What motivates you to perform?”

“Loving creation motivates me to write. I’m a Christian and one of my fundamental beliefs is God is an artist. There have been periods over the last couple of years when I’ve strayed away from the basic standards of faith. But the one thing that keeps me connected to my Creator is that he is a creator and I’m a creator too. That keeps me grounded. That’s why I write.

I perform because truths need to be presented. I realized that the presenting of truth, making someone aware, doesn’t do much on it’s own. But being able to try to spark people to action, having dialogue with people is very important to me, and I just love performing.”

“Last thing you want to share in this interview?”

“Truth is more important than feeling. A lot of times we are afraid to look within ourselves, look at the world we live in, and move past our feelings.”

– Toronto, Canada

*The Uncharted is a collective of Toronto-based Spoken Word Artists Patrick de Belen, Scribe and Patrick Walters. Check out their poetry here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmQV8nw_LKrmmGoVbBif17A