I think at heart I’ve always been a rock
and roll star. I can’t pick up my guitar
or sing along to my favourite tunes without visualising myself on-stage before
a rapturous crowd. But it irritates me
that the words I’m singing along to are often dumb. Sung or spoken with enough conviction, almost
anything can move a crowd. Bush and slam
poetry sometimes makes emotive appeal and delivery its end goal – taking simple
sentences or stream of consciousness outpourings and speaking them with punch. I’ve attended a couple of events recently
that have had me picturing the spoken poem on the page and no matter how
powerful the performance, finding it wanting.
I’ve done the same with music lyrics and been similarly disappointed,
even with my very favourite songs.
Neither is an appropriate response, but being a wordgirl, I just can’t
help myself. However, I can’t let go of the notion that
poetry is a natural medium for performance, and that the best way of getting
people, especially young people, interested in poetry is perform it, with
enough pizzazz for anyone – even the person who claims to ‘not be into poetry’
or to ‘not have time to read’ (yes, that puts a shiver down my spine too), to
feel the power of what you’ve written.
Is there really a disconnect between
performance poetry (that is, poetry written specifically for the purposes of
performance, rather than for distribution on the page), and traditional poetry
(that is, poetry written to be read on page rather than performed)? Are the two mutually exclusive? I think not.
The best performances, for me at least, are those which take what works
perfectly on the page, using imagery and subtlety, and presents it outloud with
rich nuances that might not have hit me on my first few readings, or ever. Of course the performance of poetry is one of
the oldest of art forms, going back to Gilgamesh,
to the Ramayana, to Homer. It tugs at something rather deep in our
preliterate psyche. Getting the
listener to feel that tug, and recognise the meaning being created is what a
good poetry performance is all about.
I also think that the best performances
morph what is on the page into a new medium.
It turns the verbal into the visual, showing what kind of power words can
have. The best poems for performance have
an innate musicality, using alliteration, rhythm, rhyme and assonance to
further add meaning. As the great Basil
Bunting put it, it is only when ‘sounded’ that this rhythm reveals its full
power. Bunting should know. He was one
of the great poetry performers, charging his words with the power of a
Shakespearean actor to take the audience deep into the heart of his meaning,
effortlessly and instantly. The
performances draw the reader into the intimacy of the work, breaking open the
familiar so that it appears completely, surprisingly new. Of course that’s what great poetry does on
the page too, but it takes a commitment on the part of the reader to get
there. Gaining that sort of commitment
from a reader isn’t always easy. Ask any
publisher who sells poetry. Ask any poet
who publishes their work.
Performance is something entirely
different. When done properly, with a
poem that truly merits more, rather than less, commitment on the part of a
reader, the performance can become its own work of art – like the musical
symphony, stirring something inchoate and deep within a listener. It draws a crowd, and challenges
perceptions. It can work, and should
work, in conjunction with the publication – to bring in readers, and to compel
people to explore their own clichés and assumptions about themselves. It opens doors.
Magdalena Ball is the author of the novels Black Cow
and Sleep Before Evening, the poetry books Repulsion Thrust and Quark
Soup, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment, and, in collaboration
with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Sublime Planet, Deeper Into the Pond,
Blooming Red, Cherished Pulse, She Wore Emerald Then, and Imagining the
Future. She also runs a radio show, The Compulsive Reader Talks. Find
out more about Magdalena at www.magdalenaball.com.
