POETRY ALOUD
"Poetry is a contact sport: no home but your ears." ~Bob Holman
Several years ago, I began attending open mic venues for musicians, singers, poets and storytellers. After a month or so, I decided to perform one of my poems. I walked into the coffee house, entered my name on the list of performers, found a chair and ordered an expresso. After a dozen or more performances, I noticed that none were poetry. Yeah, I thought. How could a poet compete with poetry set to music, a singer with a voice clear and fresh as a mountain spring, a story told with vim and vigor—performances that touched everyone in the coffee shop.
Just as I was about to leave, the coordinator of the event called the next name on the list. A man got up, walked to the microphone, sat down on the stool, and pulled a wrinkled piece of paper from his hip pocket. As he sat there reading his poem, I looked around at the other people in the coffee house. Only a few were listening to him. Everyone else was sipping espresso and talking energetically with one another. He's not paying attention to them either.
He read his poem quickly, as if he were in a hurry. When he came to the last line of his poem, he slid off the stool and left the stage. That was the only clue anyone had that he and his poem were finished.
The next poet walked to the mic and set the stool aside. She didn't have a piece of paper, and her eyes were on us. She's paying attention to us, I thought, so we're paying attention to her. She began slowly, deliberately, unhurried. In the first few lines, we all knew that she was speaking to us, delivering her poem from her head and her heart, not from a piece of paper. And we didn't need a degree in literature to understand and participate in the story her poem was telling. When the last line of her poem had left her lips, she paused momentarily, then stepped away from the mic. We all stood and brought our hands together in an enthusiastic round of applause. She thanked everyone with a smile and a wave and returned to her table.
Her performance encouraged me to keep attending open mic events so I could learn the do's and don't of performing my own poetry and therefore make it more likely that my poetry would be well received.
General Tips
The raw immediacy of a live audience will change you and your poetry forever.
As Bob Holman taught, “Poetry is a contact sport: no home but your ears.” Yes, poetry is an oral tradition, a rhythmic dance of words, an audible flow of sound and sense. So it must touch your ears before it can touch your heart and your head.
Reading your poems aloud will do more to change you than your poems. So let your poem rehearse you. Then give your listeners everything your poem taught you. Move around, look into their eyes, whisper, shout, lean forward, turn suddenly—everything you learned during rehearsal as if the audience were already there because now they are.
Specific Tips
Don't deliver your poem from paper or from memory.
Deliver it from your heart—if you are enthusiastic about it, others will be too.
Introduce your poem with brief, entertaining comments.
Speak slowly, pronounce clearly and maintain eye contact.
Do entertaining, energetic poems early in the program
Do thoughtful, passionate poems later.
Do short poems for children, and longer poems for adults.
Keep a straight line between your mouth, the mike and where you are looking.
Speak over the mike, not into it, so you don't pop your P's and hiss your S's.
Position the speakers closer to the audience than to you to avoid screeching feedback.
Remove any dangling jewelry that may bump against the mike.
Get beyond self consciousness—it's about them, not you.
