Thanks for writing, you two
What I am doing is boring, but there's no way round it
I keep thinking of that character in Sellers' Balham who puts the bristles
into the holes in toothbrushes -- _it is interesting work_
Tim, you express my worries and especially when you say _a seamless
practised reconstruction_
i have been not saying it because i worried about accusing a generality,
having seen that happens in other areas where i see variation; but what
you have expressed is my experience
For myself I sort of welcome the risk. I say _sort of_ because there can
be moments when i wish i wasn't there! But it is the centre of it for me;
the possibility it will go wrong; and out of that come new good things...
sometimes
I was talking yesterday with colleagues about a gig, a particular grouping
that hadn't quite worked (it might be thought by some to be music rather
than poetry); and I think the conclusion was _so it goes_ and maybe we
should try again
Another thing I was thinking of saying -- hinted at this morning -- is the
degree to which poems that are read change in the reading
I have noticed myself half reading half remembering texts and saying an
earlier version of some bits!
and sometimes, if I have moved bits around, that can be quite serious, a
maze without a door
I like to try to get through er not seamlessly er performatively
I know what I mean. I dont want to stop and start. I did last week because
I was in such a mess and hit myself on the head with my own typescript to
indicate to the audience that I was in a mess
Mostly I don't have any problem; but sometimes my memory plays me false;
and sometimes I just know how I want to rewrite and do it there and then
as I am performing
So what you have said is very useful, Tim
and another thing... I like doing _it_ the way you describe because it
gestures the artefactual nature of the poem - this is made, this is on
paper
i wouldnt mind being able to remember
i dont not want to remember
i just dont care that much
in that conversation yesterday something came up about the sounds of
flowing water and i found myself quoting the opening lines of Briggflatts
-- I don't know whether my colleague or I was the most surprised. I didnt
know I could remember it
but it spontaneously overflowed as it were; but it wouldnt have been much
different if I had said I had something to interest him and sent the lines
later by email -- which i did anyway
L
On Thu, October 20, 2011 13:44, Tim Allen wrote:
> Yes, agree with this and most of the other stuff you said Lawrence, or
> at least, agree with the questions etc.
>
> The being able to remember and recite your own poems is looked upon as
> a necessity by the performance poets - without having to follow the lines
> on a piece of paper you can then put all your eye-contact, facial
> expressions and 'actions' towards the job of performing the poem - make
> contact with your audience and all that stuff. At such an event once I was
> talking with one of the competitors who just didn't understand why I could
> not remember my own poems, and he was even more astounded when I said that
> I really didn't care and that being able to
> remember my own poems meant absolutely nothing to me - it wasn't what the
> poetry was about. Yet I love reading them, performing them, from the page
> - I like that dynamic between the reading and the human voice
> - that hesitancy that exists in the second of decision on how to 'say'
> a word. You don't get that dynamic, that reality, that confrontation, with
> the experienced performance poets - you get a performance in the worst
> sense of the word, a seamless practiced reconstruction of a verbal. It
> holds very little interest for me - and most of the time I find it highly
> irritating and affected, especially when what it is saying is next to
> nothing yet is choca with cliches and telescoped rhyming.
>
> But what I am referring to here is the traditional thing we call
> performance poetry, that thing that conforms to sets of rules, expectations
> and assumptions that the promoters of such events are usually looking for.
> There are interesting exceptions, mainly from
> those who have come from a different background, the performative and so
> on.
>
> Cheers
>
>
> Tim A.
>
>
> On 19 Oct 2011, at 18:58, Lawrence Upton wrote:
>
>
>> Calling it performance poetry because you commit it to memory and then
>> perform it, seems odd to me. I *perform poetry all the time. Many (most?)
>> of us here do, I am sure.
>
-----
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
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