4 Reasons Why You Should Perform Your Poetry.

by Ami Mattison 

I shared my poetry with an audience for the first time at an old-fashioned “poetry reading.”

Me, performing in 2003. Photo courtesy of Sir Jesse of Decatur

It was 1991, and there were four of us. We took turns standing behind a music stand where our poems were laid out, and we proceeded to read in our best “serious poet” voices. You know the voice I’m talking about—the one where every line ends in an upward tone and sounds almost like a question?

Wow, have things changed since those days!

Now, in addition to the mainstay of the literary poetry reading, there are raucous open mics and poetry slams all over the country, where people don’t simply read, they “perform.”

They spit, they slam, they rap, they rant. In other words, they use their bodies and voices to give life to their words beyond the written page.

Now, almost twenty years after my first poetry reading, I earn a modest income from touring and performing my poetry to live audiences. No more serious poet voice for me.

Instead, I give expression to my poetry through dramatic and (what I hope are) well-crafted performances.

It’s All Poetry

There’s long been a rift between the “academic,” or literary poetry scene and the spoken word scene. Academic poets often dismiss the quality of spoken word poetry, while spoken word aficionados think academic poetry is boring. But, in the final instance, it’s all poetry.

Regardless of what a poem is about or how it’s written, it can be performed in a way that entertains, inspires, or moves audiences.

What I Mean by “Performance”

When I say “perform,” I don’t mean memorizing your poem and then screaming it at audiences, though there are certainly enough spoken word performers who do that. Rather, when I say “perform,” I mean finding creative ways to emote through language in order to engage one’s listener.

Performance is an emotional interpretation of your poem.

It is simply using your voice, your body, and your breath to convey not only your words but the layered emotions beneath them.

In other articles, I’ve suggested that memorizing your poetry offers an excellent way to experience it, either alone or in front of audiences. 

But you don’t need to memorize your poetry in order to offer a great performance. Reading your poetry can also provide an opportunity to convey it in your own personal and unique way.

And ultimately, the key to a great poetry performance is finding your own voice and your own style of sharing your poetry.

After all, it’s your poetry. And who better to perform it than you?

Why You Should Perform

Many poets who have published works read their poetry as a way to sell and promote their books, and that’s a great reason to perform or read. But you don’t need something to sell in order to perform your poetry. All you need are some poems you want to share and a venue to share them in.

Besides selling your books, there are several reasons to perform your poetry. Here a few of the reasons why I perform:

Plumbline coming with tight lines and right rhymes to WORD UP Volume 5.

The last time at WORD UP Volume 4, he told us "How Richard Branson lost his Virginity." Check out the video via this link How Richard Branson lost his virginity.

His name is Plumbline, and he is a Poet, Songwriter, Political Blogger, Hip Hop Rapper and Spoken Word Artist.  

He started and hosts a monthly Open Mic Spoken Word Poetry event, Chill and Relax and has performed in all the major Performance Poetry and Spoken Word Circuits in Nigeria.

He was also a Judge at Season 1 of War Of Words (Slam Poetry Competition).

This Saturday August 17, 2013 you can be sure he will thrill us with his tight lines and right rhymes at WORD UP Volume 5. The venue is TerraKulture Hall, Tiamiyu Savage Street, Victoria Island, Lagos from 2pm. 

Plumbline doing a Poetic piece on Religion 

at Chill and Relax (August Gusto) 

on August 19, 2012

 in Gbagada, Lagos. 

Chill and Relax is a monthly Open Mic Performance Poetry, Spoken Word and Soul Music Event.

For Closet Poets: How to Claim Your Creative Identity.

Written by Ami Mattison

Do you write poetry but rarely if ever share it with other people? 

Does anyone even know you write poetry? Are you reluctant to call yourself a poet? Do you dream of publishing your poetry, but can’t bring yourself to move forward towards that aspiration?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you’re probably a closet poet, or a poet who hasn’t yet formally and publicly claimed that identity and embraced the full significance of his or her poetry and creative process.

Life in the Poetry Closet

In college, I was a closet poet. When a renowned poet Adrienne Rich visited our school, I was excited and eager to meet her. When I did, she asked me point-blank: “Are you a poet?” While I wrote poetry, and I was indeed a poet, I rarely shared my poetry with others and I had never publicly claimed that identity. So, my reply was: “No, I’m not a poet, but my friends are.”

At the time, I thought poets were only those artists who wrote brilliant poetry, not someone who, like me, was a mere beginner and who, like me, wasn’t formally trained to write poetry.

Why Come Out?

If you’re a closet poet and you’re reading this article, then you probably possess a deep desire to own your identity as a poet, to share your poetry with others, and to improve your writing skills.

By sharing your poetry with other poets and supportive friends and family members, you may just receive the necessary ego-boost and inner drive to work harder to improve your writing.

Plus, when done in a thoughtful way, sharing your poetry is fun and deeply rewarding, and you can’t reap the benefits of those rewards until you come out of the poetry closet.

Most significantly, if you’re dreaming of publishing your poetry, you won’t be able to take yourself or your poetry seriously enough to do so, until you come out as a poet.

Chill and Relax: August Crush (an Open Mic Spoken Word Poetry Event) holds on August 11, 2013.

Chill and Relax : August Crush

This is a Performance Poetry and Spoken Word open mic event where everyone and anyone can step up and rock the mic. 

Date is August 11, 2013

Time is 3pm

Venue is 16,  Abeni close,  ASA Estate, off Ayodele Okeowo street, after Deeper Life church, Soluyi Gbagada, Lagos

Featuring Lagos Finest Poets.

TAKING THE MIC by Kate O'Shea

Performance poetry, poetry slams, open mic nights. What’s it all about? Sitting through any number of poetry readings (with or without a microphone) is a good way to grasp a healthy loathing of the form. Yet in recent years, technology has led to a resurgence of interest in poesia. Indeed, on a bad day, the Internet is almost sluggish with poets and poetasters.

And while it’s not quite celebrity, many have made their way out of the closet to find ever-more-youthful devotees who not only read poetry but write and perform it as well.

What of it? We must have our fancies – for some it’s a microphone, others may prefer a pen no larger than their sense of humour. Aristotle observed that the poet is concerned with the universal rather than the particular. Would the rhyming world be a better place without open mic nights? I seriously doubt it. Microphones are not easy to come by or affordable in comparison to pens, available in most newsagents. Newsagents are not fussy and will furnish any die-hard scribblers with the necessary tools.

Should we gather up all the pens in order to stop the collapse of poetry, or to guard against shoddy penmanship? The idea is ludicrous. While almost any experience might create a poem, it does not follow that every successful utterance of experience is poetry. Verse alone does not make a poem.  Lines may scan and rhyme yet be quite unpoetic:

"I put a hat upon my head
And walked into the StrandAnd there I met another man
Whose hat was in his hand.”
- Dr. Johnson

A poem is self-transcending but, while the microphone may amplify sounds so that you seem louder (and more important), it cannot make you a poet. The nature of poetry is too mysterious to examine, and there is no yardstick by which you can measure technical proficiency.

A poem is or isn’t. Emotion, no matter how strong and genuine, is not poetry. I, for one, am very amused by the paradox of poetry’s obstinate continuance in the present phase of civilisation. As for open mic nights – poetry is reinventing itself and finding new audiences.

It’s hard enough for a young person to admit to writing poetry and then have to go out there (without a parachute) and read it to a roomful of giddy strangers. Yeats would call that reckless courage.

Who knows: in that vast cosmos of poeticules, perhaps there’s a John Betjemen or an Anne Sexton bumping in the crowd? I would ban boring verse, the type that’s mannered and literary in the old-fashioned sense. Personally I cannot stand the trained actor method of reading poetry. It’s sonorous and empty.

A poetry reading/open mic night is an odd creature. However, it shouldn’t be reduced to therapy. Each reading has its own character; it affects and reflects the audience. There is no correct or exact formula, but it is important to have good poets who know their craft. Each individual poet offers a contribution to the whole. Even with the microphone you cannot make a poem better than it really is.

The most experience and dynamic poets run the risk of boring an audience if they are unaware of the listeners’ capacity for absorption. Enough of poeticalness. Open mic nights have got a bad press and are a fairly recent phenomenon on this island. However, they should not translate to complete laissez faire on the part of the poet, a licence to metrical anarchy.

I hope it won’t become a dead movement – doing the poetry thing and seeking novelty for its own sake. The purpose of poetry readings, with or without the microphone, is to interest and entertain.

It’s not poetry wars. Really.

Yours truly, Kate O’Shea.

Kate O’Shea ran a very successful multi-media group Chocolate Sundaes at La Cave for four years in the nineties with William Kennedy and the late Christopher Daybell. They did not have a microphone.

http://www.poetryireland.ie/resources/feature-articles/taking-the-mic.html

Tips for performing at poetry and spoken word open mic nights

Reading your own poems out loud to a room full of strangers might sound terrifying. Having done it a few times myself, I can confirm that it is. But with the number of poetry open mic nights in Scotland increasing, sometimes eclipsing their musical cousins, there must be a reason why so many people put themselves through it. So if you’ve penned a few verses and are considering taking the plunge, what should you look out for?

Chill and Relax tagged June Funk comes up June 9, 2013

Chill and Relax : June Funk

This is a Performance Poetry and Spoken Word open mic event where everyone and anyone can step up and rock the mic. 

Date is June 9, 2013 (2nd Sunday of the month)

Time is 3pm

Venue is 16,  Abeni close,  ASA Estate, off Ayodele Okeowo street, after Deeper Life church, Soluyi Gbagada, Lagos

Featuring Lagos Finest Poets.

Chill and Relax: April Frills (a monthly open mic Performance Poetry event)

Chill and Relax: April Frills

A monthly Performance Poetry and Spoken Word open mic event 
where everyone and anyone can step up and rock the mic.
Date is April 14, 2013 (2nd Sunday of the month)
Time is 3pm
Venue is 16, Abeni close, ASA Estate, off Ayodele Okeowo
street, after Deeper Life church, Soluyi Gbagada, Lagos 
Featuring Naija's Finest Poets.
Special Soul Music Performance by

Oyinkansola (Soul music Diva with style).

Chill and Relax: February Love tango this February 10, 2013.

Chill and Relax : February Love Tango

This is a monthly open mic 

Performance Poetry and Spoken Word event, 

where anyone and everyone is free to display their poetic prowess 

with no inhibition. 

Date is February 10, 2013 

(2nd Sunday of the month)

Time is from 

3pm

Venue is 16,  Abeni close,  ASA Estate, off Ayodele Okeowo street, after Deeper Life church,

Soluyi Gbagada, Lagos

Featuring Naija's finest Poets.

CHILL and RELAX - January Freshness

Chill and Relax : January Freshness

This is a monthly open mic 

Performance Poetry and Spoken Word event, 

where anyone and everyone is free to display their poetic prowess 

with no inhibition. 

Date is January 13, 2013 

(2nd Sunday of the month)

Time is from 

3pm

Venue is 16,  Abeni close,  ASA Estate, off Ayodele Okeowo street, after Deeper Life church,

Soluyi Gbagada, Lagos

Featuring Naija's finest Poets.

Hands Up by Atilola (Spoken Word Poetry)

Spoken Word Poetry by Atilola, titled 

"Hands up" 

performed at 

Chill and Relax (October Fever) 

on 

October 14, 2012 in Gbagada, Lagos, Nigeria. 

Chill and Relax is a monthly open mic Performance Poetry, Spoken Word and Soul Music Event

and it holds every 2nd Sunday of the month.

The last one for the year 2012 comes up on 

Sunday December 9, 2012.

from 3pm.

It is tagged

Chill and Relax (December to Treasure)

Chill and Relax: December to Treasure........!!!!

Chill and Relax : December to Treasure

This is a 

Performance Poetry 

and 

Spoken Word 

open mic event, 

where you can step up 

and 

display your poetic prowess with no inhibition. 

Date is December 9, 2012 (2nd Sunday of the month)

Time is 3pm

Venue is No. 16 Abeni close,  ASA Estate, off Ayodele Okeowo street, after Deeper Life church, Soluyi Gbagada, Lagos

Featuring Naija finest Poets.

Gate is free

For more information/ inquiries   

please call 08038315055, 08023400035

What is Performance Poetry?

I can feel my heart racing, like it always does. I’m sitting close to the stage, trying to loosen my limbs without drawing too much attention to myself. The theatre is dark, but for the spotlight on the centre of the stage. Claps echo around the room long after hands have stopped moving. Eyes follow the poet’s every movement- the flick of the wrist, the roll of the eyes, the twist of the heel, the slight tap of the toe on a sentimental line break.

The host calls out my name by way of introduction. I walk tentatively up to the microphone. It always takes a couple of minutes to get into the flow of the show. With every line, you’re aware that you have to keep the audience’s attention. But when and if you do, there’s no other feeling quite like it. Adrenaline pumps through you. The build up, the tension and the nerves suddenly feel worthwhile. It’s the feeling of finding your voice. It’s performance poetry.

In a series of interviews with poets, Spoken Word London asked about the juxtaposition of poetry intended for the page and poetry intended for the stage. Is there a difference?

Yes, according to some. Performing your work means you get one shot at connecting with your audience. You have to keep their attention. Furthermore, one has more freedom to be experimental in print. As the art of reading is a solitary experience, the reader can take time to interpret the piece as they want, at a speed in which they’re comfortable with.

Others, however, maintained that there is no difference. Poetry is poetry. You don’t write it with the intention of printing or performing, you write it to express yourself.

But as I watched the various acts that came before and after me tonight, one issue was burning at the forefront of my mind. What is the difference between reciting and performing? Does performance poetry point toward a distinction between the reading voice and the speaking voice? Does it call for more theatrical devices? And if so, has the performance element of poetry become so important that we’ve lost sight of the actual words and their meaning?

From the 1950s to ‘70s, poetry performance developed as a form of both rebellion and cultural expression. The Beat poets would meet in various corners of New York City, reading their radical work as protest against the stultifying mood of McCarthyism. The art was soon taken up by poets committed to particular social and political movements. Gil Scott Heron, Amira Baraka and The Last Poets all made actual demands for social and political change. Through addressing their audience as a community, they became situated within that community. And through theatrical devices and the emphasis on speech rhythms, the poets were able to showcase a certain cultural identity.

 So the desire to write became less about a grounding in poetry and more about having a voice, expressing yourself and releasing the frustration and hopes of an entire generation. It was about expressing one’s experience in a way best suited to the message and the community. And it showed that we must differentiate between the poetry reading and the poetry performance. The latter presents the poet not as a reader, but as a speaker.

Does this mean, then, that the poetry performance as we know it today is historically connected with the poet’s position within his social and political surroundings?

If so, are we not at risk of allowing entertainment to distract us from the core causes we are speaking about and against. Most of the time, entertainment does not invite focus on issues of particular complexity. It merely does what it advertises on the tin. Amuse and divert.

Slam poetry, for example, has introduced a notion of competition to performance poetry. Is this notion adverse to the very function of art? Slam poets are constantly competing for the approval of the audience, which means they are less concerned with being in competition with the self. Art becomes a show. It becomes point-scoring.

Shouldn’t we allow the poetry to take precedence over the performance factor?

by Nadia Khomami

http://www.spokenwordldn.com/2012/05/08/what-is-%E2%80%98performance-poetry%E2%80%99/

Chill and Relax: October Fever (a Performance Poetry and Spoken Word open mic Event)

Chill and Relax : October Fever

This is a Performance Poetry and Spoken Word open mic Event where everyone and anyone can step up and rock the mic.

Date is October 14, 2012 (2nd Sunday of the month)

Time is 3pm

Venue is 16,  Abeni close,  ASA Estate, off Ayodele Okeowo street, after Deeper Life church, Soluyi Gbagada, Lagos

Featuring Naija's Finest Poets

Entry is free