John Myers (aka Mister John) runs a regular poetry evening here in Eastbourne at the Underground Theatre cafe. I’m giving it a good plug not least of all because next month I’m the guest poet. And I do also want people to support the event, as we’re not awash with poetry events in Eastbourne (YET). The format of John’s events is to have a guest reader each time, sandwiched around open mic spots which bring in a decent audience.
So, with World Poetry Day coming up John had the idea of holding a special event to celebrate the many poetry workshopping groups in East Sussex – a showcase evening in which members of the different groups could each read/perform. Last night the event came together amazingly well, considering how many poets there were to herd.
I was there as a supporter, having connections with three of the five groups. Represented were Brighton Poetry Stanza, Rottingdean Writers, Downland Poets,Hastings Poetry Stanza and Mid Sussex Stanza. It was a convivial evening with only two or three people taking more than their allotted time (I’d like to say ‘they know who they are’ but sadly that’s not often the case). So we heard readings from around 30 poets, followed by an open mic, and John ran a pretty tight ship.
Not everyone gave their name (or full name) which was a shame. There was a big range of material, from the usual subjects (nature, death, family) to belly dancing (literally) and people pissing on doormats (not literally). I was so pleased to hear Louise Taylor‘s ‘leather bird’ and ‘bikini wax’ poems again, she is so funny and thanks to her brilliant timing I never fail to guffaw at the punchlines. Marion Tracy read from her impressive new collection Dreaming of Our Better Selves (Vanguard Editions) which I’ve been enjoying reading – more on that to come in a later post. Antony Mair gave a stonker of a reading, virtually from memory (but not the ‘stare straight ahead, speak quickly and look as if I’m trying to remember my lines’ way AT ALL). He told me it was down to an excellent day he’d spent at Live Canon, learning about how to deliver one’s poetry.
I’ve only really started reading poems from memory this year, but rarely an entire set. I admire those poets who not only memorise long, often VERY long poems, but communicate them with panache and seeming ease.
But is reading from memory a requirement of a memorable reading? Does reading from memory always enhance the listener’s experience? Just how much extra work are you setting yourself – and is it worth it? What if the poet’s nervous enough already – isn’t it better for them (and the audience) to stick with reading it off the page?
I asked two poet friends (and experienced poem-memorisers) to get their views on it, and also asked myself the same questions.
Tony Gill, aka Gilli Bloodaxe, has performed in clubs, a crypt, a barge and at festivals little and big. His first collection Finwas published this year by Matador. Peter Kenny is a poet, playwright and serial collaborator, having worked with musicians and writers in all kinds of genres. His pamphlet ‘The Nightwork’ was published in 2014 by Telltale Press.
Peter Kenny
What makes you want to memorise poems – particular reasons?
Peter Kenny: I’m starting to memorise my poems and try to perform them from memory when I can. I write to communicate with people, and I think shuffling and hiding behind papers is obviously a barrier. It’s nice to give the audience eye contact and focus on bringing the poems to life rather than simply reading from a page. I don’t like readings where the poet seems to be talking to themselves.
Tony Gill: I think that when a poet (or anyone actually) stands and reads, there is a physical barrier (the book, a piece of paper) between them and their audience. The poet is saying “I’m reading this poem in this book”. Without the book, it’s a more natural communication, it frees you up to move around and wave your arms, you’re telling a story like a Viking at the fireside…
Robin Houghton: Reciting from memory really feels like you’re making a connection with the audience, but you do have to make eye contact. That business of ‘focus on a point above people’s heads’ is the worst advice ever given, I think. People have told me they hear more of the poem and take in the words more intensely when they’re being spoken to rather than read to.
Do you think it’s something all poets should try to do, or does some poetry not really ‘need’ to be delivered from memory?
TG: Yes!
PK: Interestingly, the reading I found most electrifying was actually not from memory at all: I saw RS Thomas when I was a student and he read from the page without giving the titles of his poems or introductions, but was utterly brilliant.
RH: Some poems work much better from memory. But I think a poet can still deliver effectively off the book, as long as s/he adds value somehow to the audience experience. This could be (for example) looking up and making frequent eye contact with listeners, or it could be animating the poem in a way the audience wouldn’t get just from reading it on the page.
How do you go about memorising poems – do you have a routine/schedule? How much time do you think it takes to learn a new poem?
PK: It takes me several days to learn a poem. I just stand in my kitchen and say the thing over and over for ten minutes for three or four days and I usually have it. Also when you are memorising something, if it is persistently unsayable, then something’s usually wrong with it.
TG: Some are easier than others – if there’s a structure, or if they rhyme. Once I’ve learnt it, I see if I can recite it over music, which is quite distracting. The amount of time depends on the length of the poem. But generally not that long.
RH: So far I’ve only memorised reasonably short poems. If the poem’s in stanzas then that helps: I do it one stanza at a time. (If it’s not then I might temporarily reorganise it so that it is!) Lots of repetition out loud (it helps if there’s no-one around). Remembering the links between each stanza is important – the last word/phrase of one and the first word/phrase of the next. Because once you start the stanza you’re off and running.
I try to ‘see’ the overall shape – the start, the build-up, the aside, the climax etc. It can take me a while, and several actual readings, until I’m secure.
Any top tips for a poet who’s never managed to read a poem from memory – how might they go about it?
TG: Just do it!
PK: My stepdaughter is an actress and she reminded me to have a few physical movements or body positions for different bits of the poem. Using your body as well as your brain to prompt the next bit seems to work quite well for me.
RH: The only other thing I would say is to practise, and in front of an audience. Practise at the low key/low risk readings where you have enough adrenaline to make it real, but no big deal if you stumble because you’re among friends. It will build your confidence for the bigger readings. I always remember the saying “an amateur practises until they get it right, a professional practises until they can’t get it wrong”. I still have a long way to go on that score!
Have you ever dried, and what’s your advice if that happens?
PK: I have dried completely at least twice but I’m fairly philosophical about it. You’re not in the middle of a play and putting everyone else off. When you make a mistake you feel like there’s a yawning chasm of time when you are giving the reading, but the audience might not even notice as much as you think.
RH: I had a near-miss once, but held it together, and quite recently I dried completely and had to reach for the book. I was annoyed at myself but you just have to laugh and not make a thing of it. The audience doesn’t want to see you distressed.
TG: Only when I’ve had a drink, which I never ever do before a reading.
Just a quick update and a look ahead to the weekend …
I was excited to see the T S Eliot Prize shortlist, especially as it included the excellent debut collection from Sarah Howe – Loop of Jade – which I mini-reviewed on this blog a short while ago. I’ve already signed up for Katy Evans-Bush‘s excellent preview day when we look at all the shortlisted collections as curated by Katy. I went this a couple of years ago and it really enhanced my enjoyment of the readings night. Recommended! I’ve also bought a couple of the books on the list – Mark Doty’s Deep Lane and Don Paterson’s 40 Sonnets. I’m trying not to read any reviews of the books before I talk about them on the The Reading List, in case they influence me, and I’m trying so hard to learn how to review/critique.
Speaking of DP – I’ve booked to go hear him and Liz Berryread at The Print Room on 15th December…actually off the back of hearing Liz read on the podcast Transatlantic Poetry – definitely worth a browse, there’s a wonderful archive of poetry reading there.
Meanwhile I’m three sessions in to New Writing South’s ‘Advanced Poetry’ course with John McCullough and it’s really warming up. With a large number of students I suppose it always takes a while to settle down. But John’s enthusiasm and support is great. He’s giving us a crash course in poets many of us are unfamiliar with and it’s very exciting. I’m keeping notes on all the writing prompts and tips he gives us in the hope they will be useful to dip into. He’s also suggested we create an ‘anthology’ of poems that we like – in magazines, on the web, etc – type them each out and save them in a ring binder under categories that will help us refer to them later, for inspiration. It sounds a bit analogue but I thought this was a fine idea – I so often read a poem in a mag, think ‘ooh this is good’ then have trouble recalling who wrote it or where I saw it – duh! Mind you, these days one needs to be careful not to fall into the ‘I must have subconsciously been influenced by XYZ and yes my own poem came out pretty much word-for-word the same but it was all an innocent mistake!’
Last week we had a whistle-stop tour of rellie-visiting and on the way we stopped at Bradford upon Avon for Dawn Gorman‘s excellent Words & Ears event. What a privilege to be invited to read there – so many good poets in the room, and a lovely atmosphere. Thank you to everyone who came and also to those who bought pamphlets – I think this was my best reading in terms of sales!
And now to Aldeburgh! It’s my first visit to the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and I think it’s going to be a wonderful weekend. I’m sharing a ‘sorority house’ with poet friends Clare Best and Charlotte Gann on the bracing Aldeburgh seafront. If you’re coming too, please say hello if our paths cross!
Ah, National Poetry Day seems to be the unofficial kickstarter of the poetry season (is that ‘open season’)? Last week saw a flurry of competition results and exciting announcements: Facebook was groaning under the weight of congratulations and almost couldn’t keep up.
First of all the Stanza Poetry Competition, won by Graham Burchell to whom I hand over my tiara (although I think it looks better on me, to be honest) and Runners Up none other than my old Brighton Stanza mates Marion Tracy and Tess Jolly. Yay!
Then lovely poet friend Abegail Morley scooped up the Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year award (not exactly from under my nose – I only made the longlist, but I would have put up a fight if I’d been there!) Hurrah!
For my own part, I’ve nothing amazing to announce but I did make the longlist for the Poetry School/Nine Arches ‘Primers’ competition. Longlisting is an interesting idea – I have to remind myself that its purpose is actually to encourage the entrants. Longlistings don’t make it onto CVs (except possibly for the National). But at least you know you came close-ish.
This week sees a lovely bumper crop of readings – on Wednesday 14th October I’ll be back on my old manor in Lewes for the launch of South Magazine 52. I was one of the selectors together with Jeremy Page of The Frogmore Papers so will be be reading a couple of poems alongside a number of the contributors including poet friends Lucy Cotterill and Miriam Patrick. The selection process for South is done anonymously, so I had no idea we’d chosen poems by Miriam and Lucy, but it was a nice surprise.
On Thursday 15th, I’m in … Lewes. Yep – like I never left! It’s the quarterly Needlewriters readings, this time featuring Matthew Stewart, Ros Barber and Caroline Clark. I’m not reading but as I’m on the committee I’m naturally there helping (?) out where possible. It’ll be nice to remind my Lewes poet friends that I haven’t actually stepped off the edge of the planet even though Eastbourne is a foreign country; they do things differently (t)here.
On Friday 16th, that somewhat rakish editor of The Interpreter’s HouseMartin Malone has kindly invited me to join him for the launch of his new collection Cur (Shoestring Press), at the Albion Beatnik Bookshop in Oxford. He’s probably hoping to placate me after rejecting the poems I sent to TIH earlier in the year – ggrrr! The other guest readers are fellow Telltale Siegfried Baber, lovely Swindon poetry impresario Hilda Sheehan and the seemingly ubiquitous Roy Marshall, who pops up in every magazine I look at these days. I last met up with Roy in the summer at a reading in Camberwell organised by Richard Skinner.
I need a good night’s sleep after getting back from Oxford because on Saturday 17th I’ll be giving a talk to the Society of Women Writers and Journalists on the subject of … well, it’s a wide open brief, so hang onto your hats, I may be flying without a parachute. But there will definitely be some tech evangelism, some uplifting female empowerment messages and some major myth busting. Wish me luck!
What would your understanding be of a ‘live literature performance’? Is it the same, or related to ‘performance poetry’? Could any poetry, when read or recited in front of an audience, be performance poetry?
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity of seeing a live performance of Maggie Sawkins’ Zones of Avoidance which won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry last year. It’s billed as ‘multimedia live literature production’, and with Mark C. Hewitt as director I had an inkling of what that meant. I knew it would be staged in some way. I suspected that the performance aspect would have little to do with the use of ‘trained actors’, or slam poetry, or a poet dominating the audience with sheer force of personality.
Mark is a writer, theatre maker, producer, director and all-round talented person who I know from Lewes Live Lit, the umbrella for all kinds of poetry activities in Lewes over the years. It’s he who organises the regular workshopping groups with Mimi Khalvati, and whose one-man show ‘Expiry tbc’ I really enjoyed a year or so back.
The performance I saw was actually a dry-run before its London debut, at The Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone, with the last performance taking place this evening. Certainly more than a rehearsed reading, as the piece had been performed quite a few times, it was nevertheless a ‘be prepared for anything’ kind of show. It was a small, invited audience and we’d been warned that not all aspects of the production would be happening (such as some lighting effects), also that we shouldn’t be alarmed if there were unscheduled moments or re-takes. In fact, there were no interruptions. Much of the material was read confidently from memory, all the technical aspects seemed to work (or work well enough for the impromptu venue). I loved the intimacy of what felt like a private view.
I knew the subject matter was based on the poet’s experience of her daughter’s drug addiction and her own professional work with recovering addicts. So I knew it wasn’t going to be ‘light’ entertainment. But I have to say I found the whole experience mesmerising. The trouble with trying to describe the dramatic elements of something like this (to someone who wasn’t there) – the props, the lighting, the use of projection/audio tracks, how the poet/performer changes position – is that you end up with a list of features which can, out of context, sound a bit periferal or mannered. But it wasn’t like that – the staging was absolutely integral to the piece.
The poet’s delivery was matter-of-fact, deadpan even. There was humour. And pathos. And most of all the frustration, anger and desperation of a mother having to stand by as her daughter self-destructs. It was moving, but not maudlin. Occasionally, between poems we heard recordings of addicts in recovery, speaking about their experiences. Some poems appeared on film. The whole production was carefully paced, giving us the audience time to take in what we were hearing and seeing: a muted, ordered presentation of a sad story of utter disorder.
Do go see Zones of Avoidance if you’re able to. I came away with the book which contains the whole sequence (not all the poems are in the performed version). I’ve added it the The Reading List, so in due course I’ll be talking more about the poems.
Last week I was deep in Telltale Press business which is probably why I didn’t post an update here. I’ve also been distracted by the process of ‘moving house’ which I put in inverted commas because I’m not entirely sure whether it’s actually happening, or just something I imagine is happening. Rather like those vivid memories we all have of things we think happened to us in the past, when in fact they didn’t. Anyway, it’s not exactly going smoothly and it’s taking far longer than expected, and I’m feeling a bit in limbo.
So I’ve been grateful for the poetry readings this month, the last of which is tonight in south London, only a few miles from where I grew up (but left when I was twenty). I haven’t yet decided whether to read any of my set-in-London poems, none of which are that cheery and more to the point I wonder if they may not be that good – why do I only think this when I’m considering reading them to a London audience? Hmmm. The invitation to read at this event came from Richard Skinner, the generous and multi-talented host of the Vanguard Readings that I go to when I can. Definitely worth the trip up to Camberwell.
Last Thursday we had a super time at the Poetry Cafe – Tamar Yoseloff & Sue Rose joined Telltales Peter Kenny, Sarah Barnsley and me for what felt like a night of strong performances. The Poetry Cafe is in Covent Garden, but it doesn’t feel like real London in the way that Camberwell or Highgate does. (I still didn’t read any London poems, though!)
Not quite sure where this blog post is going – sorry! But a quick update on things: no acceptances to report, alas, but I have been doing a little writing. Not a lot, but some. I’ve had polite rejections from Poetry Review and Antiphon. Those poems that had been tied up for months I’ve stopped waiting on, and have started reviewing and re-sending out. This seemed like a positive, proactive step.
Currently reading: the June issue of Poetry Magazine which arrived last week, with the lovely line by John Wieners on the back – “Yesterday over the cliff, today on top of it.” Also recently arrived is the Rattle Summer issue, and The Interpreter’s House 59, which is very good indeed, with strong work by some different names. Am I the only one who reads only the poems, not the stories? Unless it’s by an author I know. If I ever started a magazine it would be poetry and commentary only, no prose. That’s one of the things I love about Rattle – “poetry, translations, reviews, essays and interviews.” Although I’d like to include art as well, but I know that pushes up production costs. Oh and the other fun read I had recently was Young Bysshe by Claire Tomalin – a bite-sized romp through the early life of Shelley. I can hardly believe what he packed into his first 21 years. Astonishing.
It’s a crazy scene – the vibrancy, the quirkiness, the sheer number of people, Cahal Dallat’s virtuosic keyboard skills (yesterday the background medleys included opera classics and a rumbunctious dose of Mozart, all from memory). Moving amongst the crowd, Anne-Marie greets everyone and the whole place feels like a party. And who’s that sitting at the back? Oh, it’s Van Morrison and Jimmy Page, dropped by for a spot of poetry action. You can’t help but feel you’re on a film set. Love it!
Last night’s first half readers were Mark Huband, Scarlett Sabet, Will Burns & Miranda Peake, after which we had a brief musical interlude when Henry Fajemirokun played and sang a very nice Simon & Garfunkel number. Mark Huband’s background in journalism and travel writing informs his poetry – he read from his book ‘American Road’ and some extracts from a new long work. I loved the start of Scarlett Sabet’s set, a strong first poem full of promise. Towards the end she read some more performance-style poems which I find a bit harder to digest – I suppose I mean the repetition and relentless hard rhymes, which I find distract from the meaning and weaken the power of the words. Miranda Peake admitted she was very nervous, which was a shame, because it dried out her voice – I suspect I would enjoy her poems on the page, they seemed accomplished.
I didn’t take notes, although I noticed a few people around me doing so. I wonder what they write? Maybe the names, for future reference, or perhaps an idea or two that needed capturing. I do sometimes find my mind wandering in a reading, but not in a bad way – it’s usually something I hear that takes seed or gives me a sudden angle on an old issue. As I’m writing now I’m remembering a couple of things I should have written down at the time. Oh well! And the other thing I’m famously pants at is taking photos of well-lit readers in dark spaces. Which is why I only managed one, but the reader is so blanched out it could be anyone – although it is in fact Will Burns:
The second half felt like the big-hitters, with Nigerian poet Inua Ellams (check out his beautiful and stylish website) full of warmth and humour getting things off to a cracking start, Tim Richardson – a big character with an even bigger following in the room, Roisin Tierney – authoritative presence & many Spanish food references and R.A. Villanueva, a vibrant American reader who I wish I could have paid more attention to, but I was a bit tired and thinking about my train at this point.
My favourite reading of the night was by Will Burns and I couldn’t wait to snap up a copy of his pamphlet. Something about his poetry made me sit up. There was nothing exotic about it, but it was extraordinary. The problem with writing about the extraordinary, whether it’s people, experiences, places, is that the writing has a lot to live up to. (See point 7 of Don Paterson’ tips). Plus there’s not always space for the reader. Whereas writing about the ordinary, in an extraordinary way, feels to me like the real work of poetry. It doesn’t just let me in, it reminds me there’s a reason to write and how much there is still to discover both in myself and in others.
On the home page of the website, a quote from Billy Collins declares that the Troubadour has “evolved over its 60 year history from a hidden-away beatnik coffee house to a world famous center for the performance of music and poetry.” Well, it still feels pretty beatnik to me, and nothing wrong with that.
Pighog Press has hosted a poetry night at the Redroaster cafe in Brighton for many years. I’ve attended quite a few times and it’s always an eclectic mix of the familiar, the unusual and the colourful (especially in the famous open mic slots).
The events are organised and hosted by Michaela Ridgway, herself a talented poet and the sort of person you want in a poetry workshop – always rigorous but fair in her criticism. Michaela is also an artist as you can see from her Tumblog. Although Pighog was bought out last year by US publisher Red Hen, the poetry nights continue, and I was delighted when Michaela invited me to read there. I shared the bill with Andreea Stan, a Romanian poet & animator who I duly researched online and found some of her performances. Take a look at this one – a poem called ‘Seven Miles’ which Andreea also performed on Thursday.
We had a good audience and I was so pleased to see so many Stanza friends there, and even one of my schoolfriends came to cheer me on. Thanks, Caroline! I have to say that Michaela’s intro was the best I’ve ever received, especially her talking up of both my blog and Telltale Press. Twas wonderful.
I read a pretty similar set to the one I did at Lauderdale House, although I was a bit spooked by the lighting which I wasn’t expecting to be quite so directly in one’s eyes – is that what it’s like for stage actors, I wonder? I like how it looks from the audience’s point of view, but with eye-contact a key part of my delivery I had to adjust! I made a bit of a slip up by forgetting to do my ‘thankyous’ before the final poem, which meant I had to hang about on stage at the end which rather spoilt the dramatic effect! Ah well!
Fellow Telltale Poets Peter Kenny & Sarah Barnsley were there, and Peter took some pics on his iPhone which I think have a certain blanched-out style, I quite like it actually …
It’s funny how you learn something new every time you do one of these readings. It gets more enjoyable with practice, and it’s tempting to go a little further each time. A few nerves are still important I think. As is taking new risks. There’s a fine line between confident and polished, and slightly smug and a bit ‘phoned in’. And I don’t think I would ever be seen as a ‘performance’ poet, even though I know it doesn’t have to be all rapping, rhyming and ranting. Local to me, Susan Evans and Louise Taylor come to mind as performance poets I love to see and hear – larger than life, brilliant characters in themselves, witty observers. But there are blurred lines in the ‘performance vs page’ debate, which is why I can’t bring myself to think of them as different disciplines. I’m a big admirer of the performances of poets such as John Agard, Daljit Nagra and even Roger McGough. But I wouldn’t call them performance poets, but rather ‘accomplished poets who give compelling performances’. I think that’s what I aspire to.
Well I did it. Yesterday evening at Lauderdale House in Highgate I recited two of my poems from memory. It was actually the perfect set-up – no microphone (which I usually like having, but in this case I was concerned it would prevent me from moving freely), the chairs set out in a semi circle, so I felt like a real story-teller. More about it in a mo.
First of all, I have to say how grateful I am to Shanta Acharya for giving me the opportunity to read at Poetry in the House, which she has been organising for nearly 20 years, without any outside funding. The evening began with an invitation to join Shanta and the other readers for a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant. A very sociable start to the night and one I particularly appreciated, because I knew I wouldn’t have even a moment to socialise at the end, being at the mercy of the 22.47 from Victoria.
The size of the audience was impressive (a lot more chairs had to be added after I took the above photo), and Shanta’s hosting style is wonderfully relaxed – all the readers’s biogs were on the flyers that people had in their hands, so she dispensed with verbal introductions, other than saying our names, and I liked that. It really seemed to put the poems to the fore, rather than the personalities. And what poems – all the sets were very strong.
Richard Skinner was launching his Smokestack pamphlet ‘Terrace’ (more on that shortly – we have pledged to swap pamphlets but will be doing so this evening at the Vanguard Readings) and treated us to ‘a Nebuchadnezzar joke’ and a beautiful poem written for a friend’s wedding which has yet to take place, amongst others. When Richard and I were talking earlier I was interested to learn that he never attended poetry courses or workshops, despite his impressive track record as a poet and the fact that he is Director of the Fiction Programme at Faber Academy. For my part, I replied that although I do go to workshops, I had to concede that the individual poems I’ve had the most success with hadn’t ever been workshopped. Hmm!
I was intrigued by the poetry of Mona Arshi – sometimes surreal, always surprising – who was ‘pre-launching’ her first collection, Small Hands, which she told me at supper beforehand was one of the first poetry books from Liverpool University Press. Another poet I want to read more of is Philip Hancock. I really enjoyed the mix of unselfconscious invention and gently ironic observation which I got from his poems. I’m not very articulate at explaining why particular poet voices resonate me with, but his did. Geraldine Paine‘s thoughtful and touching poems had both humour and beauty and Alan Murray‘s cheery pessimism and clever word-play certainly got the biggest laughs of the evening, but don’t be fooled by that, there was some heavyweight work in there.
I had the opening spot, which I was pleased about, because it meant I could then sit back and enjoy everyone else’s poems. I’d set myself the task last week of memorising a poem. In the end I did two from memory – the opener being a short and relatively easy to remember ‘list’ piece. I took Peter Kenny’s advice about tying in certain movements or gestures – I think that definitely helped to put the phrases in my mind. Being in the centre of a little ‘arena’ was also a bonus. I actually really enjoyed it, especially the silent pauses – the feeling of power, when you can hear a pin drop and you sense that people are waiting for your next words, or perhaps on edge wondering if you’ve lost it – is indescribably heady!
Halfway through the set I read one more from memory, a poem from my pamphlet, called ‘Closure’, which I’ve read often and which was written over a period of many years, so I really felt I ought to be able to remember it. As it happened, I did fluff a couple of words, but I didn’t let it show on my face and I don’t think anyone noticed. I was just a bit disappointed that I said ‘scar’ instead of ‘zipper’, since it’s one of the key moments in the poem!
So, onwards. I think I’ll do pretty much the same set next week at Pighog in Brighton, another great venue to read in, although I will be behind a mic there so I’ll need to prepared for that. If you’re somewhere within reach of Brighton do come! It’s just me and a performance poet / mulitmedia artist called Andreea Stan who I’m not familiar with, but from her Vimeo channel it looks like it could be an intriguing experience. Take a look at this – The Ocean is Almost Seven Miles Deep.
I can thoroughly recommend trying to memorise a poem or two. I opted not to have the book in my hand, because I think that would have made me less confident. Maybe that sounds odd, but not having anything to ‘fall back on’ does mean you commit to it fully, and I think that’s the key – you have to be entirely committed to delivering it from memory, and so practice as much as you need to do that. That would be my advice, anyway. I also think the audience responds to you better if you have nothing in your hands – I’ve certainly felt that as an audience member – there’s an immediacy, an intimacy that’s compelling.
