Spoken Word

A collection of spoken word pieces by Lauren Martinez Catlin (that’s me!). There are a few more on my youtube station, and I will update this list as more videos become available.

This is a piece that rose out of a frustration, as many of my pieces do. Because of a trashy tv show (not that I ever watch trashy tv), I was thinking through the idea that husbands and boyfriends should protect their women from rape, and how that doesn’t really work out in practice. The result was a feminist reflection on rape and protective males, which I hope has a somewhat transcendent conclusion.

I wrote this for A Minnesota Without Poverty, an interfaith coalition to end poverty in Minnesota by 2020. All the numbers have been researched and based on minimum wage and the cost of living in the Twin Cities.

A piece written for River Heights Vineyard’s youth group for their 30 Hour Famine fundraiser. 30 Hour Famine is an annual program that raises money and awareness for global hunger.

This one was written for Voices Merging, for their open mic entitled “Let’s Talk About Sex.” I don’t usually write specifically for VM, and I think this is the first time I’ve done a piece related to the theme. But, I heard that it was going to be about sex, and I thought, “I should do a poem on how married sex rocks. No one else is going to do that.” The result is here, not for the faint of heart.

This piece was written during a time of grief, when I discovered that there are many, many times and places when it is culturally unacceptable to be crying, but the crying is still healing even then. It is devoted to my dear friend, Michele Fought.

This one I wrote just for fun. I’d been thinking about some struggles the women I lead at Celebrate Recovery have, and how guilt keeps them so stuck. I was also procrastinating a bit from working on my novel, so when the phrase “guilt is just useless” popped into my head, I thought, that could be a poem!

This is another frustration poem. It’s based on four profiles of women ground under by false identities. Some of them are based on true stories, and all of them have a little bit of me in them. My gratitude goes out to Sandy and Alice, who were brave enough to let me reflect a piece of their lives in my art.

A poem composed to commemorate the sixth year of my marriage to the cute husband. This was also my anniversary gift to him, and a small consolation for being away from each other on the actual day.

This poem is based on a real conversation I had with a sex worker in Hollywood when I was a teenager. It also includes elements of stories I’ve heard from women at Breaking Free. It was written for River Heights Vineyard’s art and justice fusion event, entitled The Fold. Many thanks to Pete Benedict for asking me to write this and giving me an opportunity to perform it.

This is my flaming feminist piece, delivered with a smile. The writing of this poem was the unique confluence of reading “Women Who Run with the Wolves” (I highly recommend this book) and the unfortunate necessity of finishing off a squirrel my german shepard had maimed. I leave you to make your own conclusions.

A piece on homeless youth, written for Source Ministries for their Compassion 48 kick off. Once a youth hits the streets they will be approached by someone from the sex or drug industry within 48 hours. Source tries to get there first. This piece was written for them, and performed at the Fallout Urban Arts Center, in the Boiler Room.

A sad piece on the Lake Street Fire. The pub just half a block from my house burned up, igniting the apartments above it and killing five people, three of which were children. I wrote and performed this for the community memorial service.

Another piece for the cute husband, this one just because I like him a lot. This is actually part of a series on different forms of love. I performed this at Studio 3, which is one of Source Ministries locations.