Years ago, when I studied performance poetry I read the usual suspects
of drama theory, Stanislavki, Brooke, Artaud, Brecht, I tried to
incorporate their ideas into my poetry and my performance. Yet it
seems even now that drama and poetry performance are 2 separate
identities, that the Play, even in it's form as a monologue, attaches
itself to a wider context than the poem, which seems to force it's own
shape onto the performance partially because the poetry isn't normally
written as drama, with the dynamic of the stage in mind (which is
where Alison & George come in). Maybe drama is written as a set of
clothes waiting to be inhabited by a person and can't be an object
unless the words are inhabited, whilst poetry is it's own object. I
think the conditions are modal. When I've written for performance,
performance beyond that of the mere act of written performance, with a
poem "designed" for a live performance with people (uh, yeahh), it
seems to me that I've written it with a series of actions in mind,
borrowing tropes from drama as an adjunct to the poem, something
additional, with the poem's still being self-contained. Ummm. What
happens when a poem isn't self-contained, when it alludes to things
outside its orbit? I'll stop now that I've argued myself into a
circle.

From what I've seen, the nearer poets try to force their performance
towards drama, the hokier their performance becomes, partially because
poets aren't actors, even, or espeicially, when they try and become
other characters, and mostly because their stuff wasn't written with
performance in mind. I've only seen a couple of poets successfully
take on other characters or personae in performance. Like John Wayne
or Sean Connery, and a lot of other film actors, they are best when
they are themselves. Poets reading in that sing-song voice are those
who are reading poetry as they think it should be read, and so it
doesn't sound as good to me as those who relax, be themselves and
*read the poetry as themselves as they selves are the poems. Or
something like that.

Poems from two poet-playwrights:

poem 1

I felt soft fingers at my throat
It seemed someone was strangling me

The lips were hard as they were sweet
It seemed someone was kissing me

My vital bones about to crack
I gaped into another's eyes

I saw it was a face I knew
A face as sweet as it was grim

It did not smile it did not week
Its eyes were wide and white its skin

I did not smile I did not weep
I raised my hand touched its cheek

poem 2

My young son asks me: Must I learn mathematics?
What is the use, I feel like saying. That two pieces
Of bread are more than one's about all you'll end up with.
My young son asks me: Must I learn French?
What is the use, I feel like saying. This State's collapsing.
And if you just rub your belly with your hand and
Groan, you'll be understood with little trouble.
My young son asks me: Must I learn history?
What is the use, I feel like saying. Learn to stick
Your head in the earth, and maybe you'll still survive.

Yes, learn mathematics, I tell him.
Learn your French, learn your history!


Roger

On 12/10/05, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Alison
>
> this is very interesting, & I end to agree. I think it interesting then
> that those who have seen the Pinter speech remarked on his own subtlety
> of performance of his own text (clearly mostly prose).
>
> I just wanted to add something brought u[ before, about how a poem
> works differently than does drama, yet is rooted in the body. How
> actors so often get a poem wrong, because they 'perform' it as if it
> were a dramatic text, when in fact it tends to be much subtler
> (quieter?). Of course, there is 'spoken word' which seems, quite often
> to me, to be more tuned to performance than to language.
>
> Doug
> On 9-Dec-05, at 12:48 PM, Alison Croggon wrote:
>
> > Hi George, Doug, all
> >
> > By no means sick of hearing from you, George - It's got me thinking,
> > this
> > difference between play and poem, since one of my obsessions
> > (obviously, for
> > anyone who knows me) is their deep relatedness. I suppose a huge part
> > of the
> > poetic in plays and theatre is gesture and body (literally, I mean),
> > which
> > is so implicated in the language, and in the structures of speaking -
> > the
> > idea of language as action itself, the knowledge that something will
> > be said
> > in time and so must be graspable in time - which hardly eschews
> > complexity
> > (thinking of Heiner Muller here, say) - but does spin it in subtly
> > different
> > directions from poetry. Whereas in poems, the language carries the
> > whole can
> > - although of course there are many kinds of poetry, so I'm
> > generalising
> > wildly and unwisely. I know I want to pack a density and a quality of
> > torque
> > or spin into language in poems in ways which wouldn't necessarily work
> > in
> > theatrical language. But of course there are no border lines - at the
> > same
> > time, the implication of the body in poems is crucial to me. (I can
> > really
> > here only speak of my own practice of reading and writing) and that
> > dimension of orality...the differences seem to me to be clear, but,
> > like
> > much to do with writing, almost impossible to define in any precise
> > way.
> >
> > All the best
> >
> > A
> >
> >
> > Alison Croggon
> >
> > Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> > Editor, Masthead:  http://masthead.net.au
> > Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
> >
> >
> Douglas Barbour
> 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
> Edmonton  Ab  T6G 0B9
> (780) 436 3320
>
> My roof was once firm
> yet now it cannot even
>
> keep the stars out.
>
>                 Christopher Dewdney
>


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