JISCMail - BRITISH-IRISH-POETS Archives

Ian said, "I remember (non-performance?) poets who got lots of consecutive readings or went on tours saying that they started to fall back on crowd pleasers. There are always poems that work better than others when read out, but the pressure of the expectations of a crowd at the typical 'performance' night must be hard to resist."

Yes, in the general run of readings etc the drift towards using known crowd pleasers is pretty evident, but I would say, in the general scene, there is still a kind of balance between relying on such poems and trying out new stuff. Standing up and reading in front of an audience is difficult and fear can take over. I've heard poets I know read the same poems over and over, and not because they haven't any others either. I always try never to read the same poem twice in the same venue, usually because I am desperate to give something virgin a try-out - see how it goes. I don't see the point otherwise, of standing there doing anything. At the same time, as part of a 'performance', there is nothing inherently wrong in using a well-tested successful piece to finish on, just as a musician would. The thing about the 'performance' values are that they are so entrenched, so self-serving, so destructive.

Well, in simple terms, yes Tilla, they do, every genre has 'aspects' of it, and mechanically speaking of course such unwritten rules go to reinforce the differences between genres. So, is this just a matter of degree, or is there a difference in kind, between such unwritten rules in 'performance poetry' and another type? I think there is a danger, if one takes the 'difference by degree' route, in being too generous and tolerant over this, because such generosity and tolerance always seems to be one-way-traffic. As you know, I've spent most of my poetry life - that is my poetry life as an editor critic and promoter, as opposed to my poetry life as a writer - in struggling against the divisions, but no matter how hard I try to be inclusive (by demonstrating my inclusivity in practical ways) it is always the conservatism, anti intellectualism and inverted snobbery of the populists that shows itself to be the biggest barrier.

Many people of course have no idea that there is a problem. You go to a night of 'performance poetry' - the atmosphere is good, the audience is a good size, you get entertained and you go home satisfied, thinking such thoughts as, 'Why can't all poetry events be like this?' etc. So you go next time. It is far more psychologically helpful then going to that other group where somebody read a poem that you didn't understand and people were talking about poets you had never heard of. The trouble is that these people are not stupid - they probably read literary novels, watch Dickens on the telly, buy CD's of World Music and happily walk around an exhibition of paintings.

In the end you have to actually look closely at what is going on in a 'performance poetry' event. You have to understand why (some real life examples here, but without names) although Poet's A's writing is like the worst ever artificial airy-fairy prog rock lyrics read in an over-dramatic manner that would make you cringe in any other context, he gets accolades and prizes by people who normally wouldn't be seen dead reading such stuff. You need to understand why because a certain poet shouts his slam poems louder than anybody else he has a reputation for winning the fucking things, even though his poems are pieces of meaningless rhyming that make Wendy Cope sound profound. You can laugh this off of course, and we do, we have to, but no matter how much we laugh it off the thing still goes on, sucking the life blood out of British poetry and turning promising young poets (such as Selena Godden) into performing clowns that become nothing but caricatures of themselves.