Ah, & Lawrence
where does Sound Poetry fit into all this (which I know you practice, & Bob C did, & the Four Horsemen, etc)? If one writes a poem & then reads it to an audience, one is in fact 'performing' on some level. Some do this well (I once argued that the great Phyllis Webb, reading her astonishing Naked Poems, gave one of the greatest 'performances' I ever had the pleasure to hear: the audience was transfixed); some do not.
My problem, quite often with whatever it's called is that the language simply isnt stark, packed, concise & playful enough. You know, what makes a 'poem' interesting.
Sound Poetry is something else, certainly a performance, but also a breakaway from language as discourse; it's after something other than that.
Doug
On 2011-10-19, at 6:44 AM, Lawrence Upton wrote:
> I have been worrying about this
>
> The term performance poetry was somewhat current to indicate an emphasis;
> and then others began saying that they did performance poetry; and it
> seemed that this entailed exclusions which were never much specified
>
> Ditto spoken word
>
> I have sometimes wondered if spoken word is using too many words. In
> normal parlance, to speak is to speak words. Personally I reach for other
> words such as utterance if I want to speak of poetry which involves...
> er... utterance
>
> But if you say _spoken poetry_, what are you saying? Unless spoken word
> poetry is understood as a kind of handshake... not that there is anything
> sinister; but I sometimes wonder if this -- to me -- avoidance of saying
> with any precision what one is doing is just lazy
>
> When I hear spoken word on the radio, it is often described as _the best
> of spoken word_ which begs a few questions as well as making it sound like
> breakfast cereal
>
> Not the best of poetry but the best of spoken word poetry, with the built
> in redundancy I have noted
>
> It seems to me that there is more to this than writing with the intention
> of performance.
>
> L
>
>
> On Wed, October 19, 2011 13:23, Tim Allen wrote:
>> That's what we used to call 'performance poetry'. If 'spoken poetry'
>> is what we now call performance poetry then what does 'performance poetry'
>> mean now? Or is 'spoken poetry' different because it doesn't have the same
>> ethos as 'performance poetry' - to entertain and appease and ingratiate
>> yourself to the listener with every trick in the BOOK. Is 'spoken poetry'
>> more arty?
>>
>> Tim A.
>>
>>
>> On 18 Oct 2011, at 17:11, Deborah Stevenson wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Hi Patrick,
>>>
>>>
>>> I am talking about 'spoken word' as in a writer/poet that writes
>>> their own material and then memorises and performs it. Usually writing
>>> with the intent to do so from the onset of writing. Does that make sense?
>>>
>>>
>>> Deborah
>>>
>>
>
>
> -----
> UNFRAMED GRAPHICS by Lawrence Upton
> 42 pages; A5 paperback; colour cover
> Writers Forum 978 1 84254 277 4
> wfuk.org.uk/blog
> ----
> Lawrence Upton
> Dept of Music
> Goldsmiths, University of London
>
Douglas Barbour
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