SLAM - Explosive Growth in Performance Poetry

In one year in the 1920's there were only 15 public poetry readings in the whole of the US and 12 of them were by Robert Frost! I would say today that they would number in the tens of thousands. In the 1920's and before that the reading of poetry meant just that - you read the written poem but performance was not expected. Frost had a strong interest in sounds and sound poetry so he was willing to do live performances of his poetry.

In the last 10 years we have seen a tremendous democratization of poetry with a move away from the universities and into the libraries, coffee houses and bars with slam poetry and well attended meetings where poetry gains its voice.

This is a welcome trend and it has liberated poetry from formalism and placed it within the public eye (where it began and belongs).

Performance poetry continues the storytelling tradition of our earliest forbears who lived and declaimed in a pre-literate society.

Long live public poetry!

Drive traffic to your Blog

Why?

Why does poetry captivate me?
Where is my muse today?
Why do poems come in clusters,
Followed by a drought?

Good questions all.
The Muse of Poetry
Is whimsical
and I have learned
To follow her
According to her
Desire.

I was talking to a friend last night who was very surprised that I wrote poetry. I said I did it as a poetic diary to cover the places I have been and my feelings along life's journey. She wanted to know when I got interested in poetry, and how I got "inspired to write". It is all according to the Muse of Poetry - all poetry writers are beneath her thrall.

Drive traffic to your Blog

Language is a Virus - a Poem

This is a poem based upon an article called 66 Experiments by Charles Bernstein

Homolinguistic translation word for word
Heads the list, fair enough
And a homophonic translation of
atakallamu bil arrabiya illa qalilan
Becomes Atta lame bill scarab bee car
Pillar Carly Land
Tzaras hat's a random treat
Wildly mad libbing
Substitution cubed
Autopilot Synchronicity.

Drive traffic to your Blog

Qatar Poems - Skyscrapers at Dawn

Jutting through the fog
The inner city buildings
Pierce the leaden sky
Standing erect in their
diaphanous gowns.

Qatar at dawn
Before the heat burns
Away
the emphemeral
covering that
Separates the building tops
From the ground.

In my 32nd floor cocoon
I enjoy the majesty
of the new day.

Drive traffic to your Blog

You Know Who You Are

Coming at me sideways
from an unexpected source
We quickly struck a chord
of shared experience
Across the web of bits and bytes
A cyber friendship
In the making...

Drive traffic to your Blog

Attention Rebel Poets: George Elliot Clarke on Spoken versus Written Poetry

What the Spoken Word poet knows that the page-poet has forgotten is, POETRY is meant to be performed. In the Western tradition, it descends from Ancient Greek performances of sagas and plays. EVEN IF a Spoken Word poem LOOKS simple–TOO simple–the only way to know its real power is to read it aloud, for oneself. Eliot said, “No verse is ‘free’ for a poet who wants to do a good job.” I say, “No poem is ‘good’ UNLESS it can be read aloud.” - toronto poet laureate george elliot clarke

This quote sums up why spoken poetry is so powerful and often threatening to academic poets. There is a raw edge to performed poetry - a theatrical component that doesn't sit well with the aridity and extreme objectivity of the academically trained and lauded poet.

The interview that this quote comes from can be accessed here:

It is a thought provoking discussion, suitable reading for any outlaw poets out there...
Drive traffic to your Blog

So good to be back

Even as I flew over

the patterned fields

the love returned.

England,

Ancestral home

Point of departure

place of places.

Green fields not paddocks,

meeting with friends.

We left Heathrow,

Mark and I,

my younger brother by hours

not days,

and dallied by the Thames

at Runymede

home of the Magna Carta

Friends are what makes

life bearable, memorable

and fun.

Thanks Mark

my friend

and fellow traveller...