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Jamie, The only thing I would disagree with below is what you say about it (performance poetry) being poetry or not. As you say, this is treating poetry as a universal. I would never stand by that myself, but I see huge philosophical debates between essentialism and nominalism on this potential horizon, so I'll skip back home again. Cheers Tim A. On 30 May 2011, at 12:57, Jamie McKendrick wrote: > Tim, > This is an interesting map of the various strands that constitute > performance poetry. I just don't know enough about it to comment. > But the term itself has always struck me as a weird redundancy - > it's either poetry or it ain't. Ok I realize that this idea of > poetry is posing as a universal, but I'd stand by it! Early on the > scene, a figure like John Cooper Clarke was writing poems, and his > superb perrformances just added to the pleasure. Perhaps he'd be one > you'd think of as taking his cue from the sixties, or maybe 70s > northern punk? Same goes, as in writing poems, for Linton Kwesi > Johnson, though it's a different tradition. > This is way back, but I can recognize in the present scene some of > the features you mention. > On the question of accents, I remember a German - who'd lived here a > long time - observing that the English liked their poets to have > regional accents and their novelists to have RP accents. The first > to be gritty and authentic (which assuaged a middle-class discomfort > with poetry) and the second because it seemed fine to sound > 'neutral' or omniscient in the novel. Or something like that. The > remark has stayed with me. > Best, > Jamie