On Thu, 17 Jun 1999 12:20:50 -0600 (MDT), you wrote:
>The espresso machine. I have read and been to numerous
>readings this last year where poems battled and lost to the agressive
>swoosh of frothing milk.
Well, I suppose one could try to incorporate the swoosh into the
performance... We had a poetry reading next to the Cathedral in Durham
once, little knowing that it was bell-ringing-practice night. Unequal
contest - Roy Fisher introducing a section of A Furnace with "here's a
piece I really wrote to be sounded against a peal of bells..."
Bookshops have weird acoustics (carpets and books swallow sound -
Maggie O'Sullivan found she got no sense of her own voice at her
Waterstones reading, and I certainly know that feeling). Then there's
the traffic noise through big glass windows: I did one once where for
the poet (deep in the shop) there seemed to be no problem - but from
the back of the audience (by the windows) all they could hear was
traffic. Reading second, I became aware of the problem and pitched my
voice up - to the mystification of the front row, who couldn't work
out why I was shouting...
The simple space where everyone including the reader can hear and be
included seems so very hard to achieve.
RC
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