Why You Should Perform Your Poetry
The Spoken Word: Go Public with Your Writing
Many people who write poetry would never consider reading their work in public. This article explains why reading in public is an important part of being a poet.
OK, so you’ve been writing poetry for a year, maybe a few years. You’ve sent some poems off to small journals, maybe even had a few published. But you’ve never actually stood up in public and read your own work. Well, what are you waiting for?
Here are some of the reasons poets don’t read their work, and some arguments as to why they should.
Performing is a Scary Business
Billeh Nickerson’s comment, captured by Dennis O’Driscoll in the The Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations (2006), would express the view of many writers: “Reading poetry to strangers is a very intimate act. It’s kind of like a poetic lap dance.”
Well, yes. And if you are writing as a form of personal therapy, then by all means keep your poems to yourself and your circle of family and friends.
But most writers write because they have something to say and want to communicate it. Speaking your poem adds to the dimension of communicating, not only the meaning but also the music of the work. It will make you part of the community of writers who listen and speak as well as read and write.
People Won’t “Get” my Work
Some poets feel they don’t write the kind of poem that will make the audience laugh or seem to respond. True, some poems and ways of speaking them do provoke a more vocal audience response. That doesn’t mean that other poems are not being received and responded to.
It could be that your work gets through to one or two members of the audience in a truly significant way. Listen to some recordings of great poems—Jack Ross and Jan Kemp’s collection Classic New Zealand Poems in Performance (Auckland University Press, 2006) is one good place to start—and remind yourself of how powerful the spoken word can be.
I’m Better Off Spending my Time Writing, not Reading
You don’t need to read regularly. But you will write better poetry through learning how people react to your poems. It can be important to discover that a poem you thought was simply ironic scares or offends some listeners—especially if you intend to submit the poem for publication!
I Can’t Memorise, and I’m not a Performer
“Standing and delivering” is a powerful way to present a poem. But it’s perfectly fine to read, and to develop a personal style. Janet Hunt, in her 1998 biography of the great New Zealand poet Hone Tuwhare (Random House, Auckland), related that Tuwhare preferred not to memorise: “There are different variations of your own poems when you come to read them in public.”
As for “performance anxiety,” performing is a skill that can be practised and learned. There is lots of help available—check out the advice on the Poetry Magic website, for example.
The most important reason for reading your poetry is that performing is an affirmation. You may be worried that people think you are a little—unusual?—for writing poetry, and you’re probably right. But you do make poems, so why keep it a secret? Take the plunge and go public—you’ll be surprised at how rewarding it can be.
