This is all fascinating. I was going to say something like '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' actually, as that's one reason for holding the book or the paper in your hand as you read.
And then there are the various ways you might find to read the actual words there.
And I confess that the few times (at our Olive readings where we do a little chapbook of the poet's latest work) I was surprised & even upset when the performer departed from the written text, especially when in almost every case the departure was a lax expansion that let me down rather than lifting me up.
Ive seen/heard performers who have seemed to me to be pretty good stand-up comics; Ive seen/heard some who make interesting cultural.social comments, but lacking the precision/concision I seek in poetry.
So I found myself nodding my head to much of what Lawrence & Tim said.
Of course, when we get to that sounding thing (what I called Sound Poetry, & I recall Richard Kostelanitz calling Text-Sound Text, & Lawrence you were calling something else I cant find right now), then we get into something else, in which performing plays a key role. In Re:Sounding, Stephen Scobie & I hold the papers (the 'texts') in our hands to remind the audience that we come from poetry, not from drama or music. So, oddly enough, the paper in hand, from which we 'read,' is part of the whole performance...
Well, definitions define, & limit perhaps, so . . .
Doug
On 2011-10-20, at 7:16 AM, Lawrence Upton wrote:
> 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
>
Douglas Barbour
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