Blog #24

Amanda Bowker-Paster

ENG 3029-01

April 29, 2014

Research Article Rough Draft

Performance Poetry: Where it’s Been and Where it’s Going

Introduction

Performance poetry utilizing aspects of drama is a new idea in today’s world.  In fact, it is so new that finding previous studies on this topic was quite a task.  The previous studies I did find discussed performance poetry as the art of reading a poem aloud.  I reviewed one article in particular by Susan Chambers titled, “Reading Poetry Wrong: Prosody and Performance,” in which she supports this notion by focusing on how hearing a poem "performed" or read aloud is necessary to fully comprehending the beauty of it.  Today, however, performance poetry is taking it a few steps farther.  Through this study I plan to expand upon the previous research to show how one poet who practices performance poetry pushes the envelope and helps performance poetry evolve by making her performance pieces more of a theatrical production than a poetry reading. 

Literature Review

It was difficult to find previous research based on the type of performance poetry that I am researching because it is such a new idea and isn’t practiced by an abundance of people.  The research that I did find referred to performing poetry as reading it aloud.  The article I looked at was written by Susan Chambers in 2008 and is titled, “Reading Poetry Wrong: Prosody and Performance.”  While my paper will show that my participant believes performance poetry adds elements of drama, Chambers’ essay believes that performance poetry is to read a poem aloud.

In her article, Chambers compares how experiencing a poem can be different for the audience if they hear it performed rather than reading it silently to themselves.  She states that, “the sound of a poem is such an essential aspect of its artistry and beauty that students of poetry are often encouraged to read aloud, to be aware how the language impacts the senses,” (Chambers, 105).  Performance poetry today also taps into the senses, but uses more than just language to do so.  Chambers quoted a poet named Gerard Manley Hopkins in her article to show that he believed poems are, “performed when they are read,” and, “till it is spoken it is not performed,” (Chambers, 107).  Chambers did her job in her essay and effectively showed the differences between reading a poem silently to oneself as opposed to hearing it “performed” or read aloud, but she did not dig deeper to see all the other aspects performance poetry can hold as I hope to do through this case study.

Methods

 To gather the data for my research, I first completed an interview with a participant who I will refer to as S.  S is currently an English professor at Kean University.  She was chosen for this interview because she has been writing poetry for 53 years.  She transitioned into performance poetry in 2007 and has composed two shows of performance poetry which she has performed for many different audiences.  She is currently working to compose more pieces for a new show of performance poetry.

The interview took place on a Friday afternoon in S’s office at Kean University.  I could tell that she took pride in her office because it was decorated with some of her favorite things, including things from some of her performances.  S felt very comfortable in her office and was able to talk to me freely about performance poetry.  The questions I asked S were based on her experience with poetry.  I wanted to gain insight on performance poetry from someone who is very familiar with it.  The interview lasted for twenty-two minutes and forty-two seconds and was recorded on my iPhone so I could go back and listen to it later.

            The next step in the process of gathering data was to transcribe the interview I conducted.  I then needed to pick out excerpts of the interview that were significant to my topic.  I used discourse analysis to analyze these excerpts to show how they related to my focus.

Data and Analysis

            When I first started this project I intended for my topic to be based on the way performance poetry makes a different and/or bigger impact on an audience than silently reading a poem does.  However, when I couldn’t find much research previously done on performance poetry, and through talking with my participant, I began to realize that no one really looked how performance poetry has evolved in recent year.  Thus, my topic shifted and I decided to focus more on what performance poetry is today.  Through the interview I learned that my participant, S, has helped performance poetry evolve and has made her performances more like theater productions rather than poetry readings.

In the interview I asked S how she transitioned from just writing poetry to performing poetry.  Something stood out to me in her response; she mentioned the words, "by heart" several times.

S: and so if I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna be reading poetry on a regular basis I want to do it by heart. so the Warren county poetry festival invited me and um I did my whole set by heart.  In fact I got on stage, I took the podium, I walked it off to the um wings and without even having a um a podium I did the the

//

S: So I was able to I was doing some body working with my body but it was mostly just reciting it the word reciting means that you're doing it by heart

Using the phrase "by heart" more than once shows how important it is to S that performance poetry be recited, not read from a piece of paper.  Her view of performance poetry is similar to Chambers’ in the sense that it needs to be heard aloud, however the two views differ because Chambers believes to be performed a poem needs to be read, but S believes it needs to be memorized.

S further explained how her performance poetry differs than the idea of performance poetry in Chambers’ article by explaining how she has made her performances into a theatrical production.

S: // so I said I'd like to talk to a theater director to help me and so I was wishing and hoping that Ernst Wiggins who's on staff here uh would be the one but I called the theater department and I asked you know and he came forward.

//

S: And uh and then um what he said was okay so we got together in diners looking at it and then he decided to have a meeting to start rehearsing and I was starting to I had I was memorizing

//

S: I think it was in this room yes in this room and he shows up with three students //

S:and he's talking about lighting you know and sound effects and you know this he's really serious

//

S: So anyhow um so we took up some theater space in Vaughn Eames and he's really serious So he's saying okay "S" get on the ground okay "S" you've got you're gonna have audience on three sides

//

S: you know this part of the poem you know and so we started to negotiate how I'm gonna work to build to put the audience in what I'm gonna be doing with my body um what I'm gonna be using with props you know where am I going to be and so it turned into a theater production over these poems

In the above exercept S really got into detail about how her career with performance poetry started.  She shows how she wanted to take performance to the next level through her explanation.  To S, poetry performances should include aspects of theater.  They should have stage directions, lighting, props, and should engage the audience. 

            S discusses how she engages her audience in some of her performances in this next excerpt.

            S: um I also love doing um Thing which is a poem based on the um The Addam's Family

//

S: because I really get the audience you know snapping (while snapping fingers) and saying "boo doo doo doo" during the whole poem

//

S: // one of my purposes is to involve the audience there's some call and response um to bring in people to appreciating poetry who wouldn't otherwise because poetry people are made to feel afraid of poetry

S explained how she uses call and response techniques in her performances to really get the audience involved.  These techniques are unlike anything done in performances discussed by Chambers.  S really takes performance poetry to the next level through her techniques.  She wants her audience to become a part of the poem. 

Conclusion

 All in all, performance poetry has evolved in recent years.  So recent, in fact that even the literature I reviewed from 2008 still referred to reading poems aloud as performing poetry.  Now performance poetry goes much farther than simply reading poems aloud.  Today those performing poetry add aspects of theater and drama, recite their poems from heart, use body motions and/or call and response techniques to engage audiences, and even use props on stage to enhance their performances.  My study examined these changes and aimed to show how performance poetry has grown. 

         My study did however have some limitations.  It was only based on the point of view of one poet who practices performance poetry since I was not awarded enough time to interview more people.  If I had time I would have liked to interview more poets and audience members of performance poetry to gain more insight on this topic, to see some other ways performance poetry may have grown, and to see how performance poetry impacts its audience.  Future research will need to be done on different forms of performance poetry and on the impact of performance poetry on the audience.  More research can also be done to show how performance poetry has evolved since my research is based only one the way one performance poet has evolved her poetry.

Blog #23

Introduction

Performance poetry utilizing aspects of drama is a new idea in today’s world.  In fact, it is so new that finding previous studies on this topic was quite a task.  The previous studies I did find discussed performance poetry as the art of reading a poem aloud.  I reviewed one article in particular by Susan Chambers titled, “Reading Poetry Wrong: Prosody and Performance,” in which she supports this notion by focusing on how hearing a poem "performed" or read aloud is necessary to fully comprehending the beauty of it.  Today, however, performance poetry is taking it a few steps farther.  Through this study I plan to expand upon the previous research to show how one poet who practices performance poetry pushes the envelope and helps performance poetry evolve by making her performance pieces more of a theatrical production than a poetry reading.  
Literature Review

           

  It was difficult to find previous research based on the type of performance poetry that I am researching because it is such a new idea and isn’t practiced by an abundance of people.  The research that I did find referred to performing poetry as reading it aloud.  The article I looked at was written by Susan Chambers in 2008 and is titled, “Reading Poetry Wrong: Prosody and Performance.”  While my paper will show that my participant believes performance poetry adds elements of drama, Chambers’ essay believes that performance poetry is to read a poem aloud.    

Methods

            To gather the data for my research, I first completed an interview with a participant who I will refer to as S.  S is currently an English professor at Kean University.  She was chosen for this interview because she has been writing poetry for 53 years.  She transitioned into performance poetry in 2007 and has composed two shows of performance poetry which she has performed for many different audiences.  She is currently working to compose more pieces for a new show of performance poetry.

            The interview took place on a Friday afternoon in S’s office at Kean University.  I could tell that she took pride in her office because it was decorated with some of her favorite things, including things from some of her performances.  S felt very comfortable in her office and was able to talk to me freely about performance poetry.  The questions I asked S were based on her experience with poetry.  I wanted to gain insight on performance poetry from someone who is very familiar with it.  The interview lasted for twenty-two minutes and forty-two seconds and was recorded on my iPhone so I could go back and listen to it later.

            The next step in the process of gathering data was to transcribe the interview I conducted.  I then needed to pick out excerpts of the interview that were significant to my topic.  I used discourse analysis to analyze these excerpts to show how they related to my focus. 

Conclusion

            All in all, performance poetry has evolved in recent years.  So recent, in fact that even the literature I reviewed from 2008 still referred to reading poems aloud as performing poetry.  Now performance poetry goes much farther than simply reading poems aloud.  Today those performing poetry add aspects of theater and drama, recite their poems from heart, use body motions and/or call and response techniques to engage audiences, and even use props on stage to enhance their performances.  My study examined these changes and aimed to show how performance poetry has grown. 
         My study did however have some limitations.  It was only based on the point of view of one poet who practices performance poetry since I was not awarded enough time to interview more people.  If I had time I would have liked to interview more poets and audience members of performance poetry to gain more insight on this topic, to see some other ways performance poetry may have grown, and to see how performance poetry impacts its audience.  Future research will need to be done on different forms of performance poetry and on the impact of performance poetry on the audience.  More research can also be done to show how performance poetry has evolved since my research is based only one the way one performance poet has evolved her poetry.

Blog #22

Introduction

Performance poetry utilizing aspects of drama is a new idea in today’s world.  In fact, it is so new that finding previous studies on this topic was quite a task.  The previous studies I did find discussed performance poetry as the art of reading a poem aloud.  I reviewed one article in particular by Susan Chambers titled, “Reading Poetry Wrong: Prosody and Performance,” in which she supports this notion by focusing on how hearing a poem "performed" or read aloud is necessary to fully comprehending the beauty of it.  Today, however, performance poetry is taking it a few steps farther.  Through this study I plan to expand upon the previous research to show how one poet who practices performance poetry pushes the envelope and helps performance poetry evolve by making her performance pieces more of a theatrical production than a poetry reading.  

Methods

            To gather the data for my research, I first completed an interview with a participant who I will refer to as S.  S is currently an English professor at Kean University.  She was chosen for this interview because she has been writing poetry for 53 years.  She transitioned into performance poetry in 2007 and has composed two shows of performance poetry which she has performed for many different audiences.  She is currently working to compose more pieces for a new show of performance poetry.

            The interview took place on a Friday afternoon in S’s office at Kean University.  I could tell that she took pride in her office because it was decorated with some of her favorite things, including things from some of her performances.  S felt very comfortable in her office and was able to talk to me freely about performance poetry.  The questions I asked S were based on her experience with poetry.  I wanted to gain insight on performance poetry from someone who is very familiar with it.  The interview lasted for twenty-two minutes and forty-two seconds and was recorded on my iPhone so I could go back and listen to it later.

            The next step in the process of gathering data was to transcribe the interview I conducted.  I then needed to pick out excerpts of the interview that were significant to my topic.  I used discourse analysis to analyze these excerpts to show how they related to my focus. 

Blog #19

Performance Poetry: Where it’s Been and Where it’s Going

              

      Performance poetry utilizing aspects of drama is a new idea in today’s world.  In fact, it is so new that finding previous studies on this topic was quite a task.  The previous studies I did find discussed performance poetry as the art of reading a poem aloud.  I reviewed one article in particular by Susan Chambers titled, “Reading Poetry Wrong: Prosody and Performance,” in which she supports this notion by focusing on how hearing a poem "performed" or read aloud is necessary to fully comprehending the beauty of it.  Today, however, performance poetry is taking it a few steps farther.  Through this study I plan to expand upon the previous research to show how one poet who practices performance poetry pushes the envelope and helps performance poetry evolve by making her performance pieces more of a theatrical production than a poetry reading.  

Blog #17

How does this poet think her performance poetry impacts her audience?

A: No yes you answered it (laughing) Can you tell me about a specific time that maybe a certain audience member told you that your poetry made an impact on their life?S: Yes um I had a woman come up to me and um in Television Daddy there's a number of poems of difficult relationship with father and I always catch it in terms of some television thing but that's a way to sometimes if you have something else to look at you can bring out difficult stuff on the sideA: OkayS: So and she you know uh one of them is about abuse by a father and she said that she was able to get in touch with abuses with her mother and to think about it and to start writing about itA: mhmS: So there are any number of experiences like that that I've had that's one specific person I know who spoke of it um and I have three different shows a fourth one now that's going to be opening in May and um they're all very different from each other it also helps to stretch me creatively to think about my audiences that I'm building that they need to have some surprises so um one of my shows is Ashes, Ashes a Poet Response to the Holocaust a very profound and consistent response from the audience which is um I've read about the holocaust I've researched the holocaust but I never got it until I saw your performance because you got me on the emotional body levelA: oh wowS: and that's what poetry does it makes us experience something not just rhetorically but as a full body emotional experience so um those you know that's important and and I and in my performances I often talk about the power of poetry in the Ashes, Ashes performance I talk about why it's important to you to experience the poetry of the holocaust because it's too easy to get lost in numbers in fact there is a poem about numbers

How does my subject feel about performance poetry? (this large excerpt will be pulled apart depending on what I need, but the whole section described what S thinks performance poetry is, so for this blog I pulled out the whole section so I know what to look at)

A: So um how did you like transition just from writing poetry to the performance pieces that you do?
S: um I heard um Phillip Dacey D-A-C-E-Y um read his poetry by heart at the Passaic County Community College poetry center and I was so enamored of that and so um in 2007 I decided that I really need to um have more of my poetry published and um I would like to start readings.  I mean I wrote a lot of poetry and I wasn't really out there
A: mhm
S: um I was too busy teaching and writing (laughing)
A: laughing
S: and so if I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna be reading poetry on a regular basis I want to do it by heart. so the Warren county poetry festival invited me and um I did my whole set by heart.  In fact I got on stage, I took the podium, I walked it off to the um wings and without even having a um a podium I did the the
A: yeah
S: So I was able to I was doing some body working with my body but it was mostly just reciting it the word reciting means that you're doing it by heart
A: right
S: So, um which I had to learn (laughing)
A: (laughing) I'm sure
S:and um and then um I said well I'd like to do some more with this and so I said I'd like to talk to a theater director to help me and so I was wishing and hoping that Ernst Wiggins who's on staff here uh would be the one but I called the theater department and I asked you know and he came forward. So he said okay and so um I have a series of poems on television and fathers.  It seems like fathers is a theme here (laughing)
A: yes (laughing)
S: And uh and then um what he said was okay so we got together in diners looking at it and then he decided to have a meeting to start rehearsing and I was starting to I had I was memorizing
A: Okay
S: I think it was in this room yes in this room and he shows up with three students
A: Oh yeah?
S:and he's talking about lighting you know and sound effects and you know this he's really serious
A: yeah that must have been overwhelming all at once (laughing)
S: Well I have a theater background you know I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts when I was 12 so I mean theater's not unusual for me though I didn't pursue it.  I was also Anne Frank in my senior class play so you know I had a
A: Oh okay
S: I was partly a theater major in college (could not understand what was mumbled after this) So anyhow um so we took up some theater space in vaughn eames and he's really serious So he's saying okay "S" get on the ground okay "S" you've got you're gonna have audience on three sides
A: laughing
S: you know this part of the poem you know and so we started to negotiate how I'm gonna work to build to put the audience in what I'm gonna be doing with my body um what I'm gonna be using with props you know where am I going to be and so it turned into a theater production over these poems and what's fascinating is that um I  I do a lot of walking and I rehearse while I'm walking and driving you know if I have it by heart
A: laughing
S: That's on record
A: laughing
S: and um what happened was I noticed that as I was walking and rehearsing that's very physical that I would get ideas for how to revise the poems on the page that was the fascinating part I am not a performance poet
A: okay
S: A performance poet has to perform the poems for them for the poems to be poems  for me the poems have to work on the page usually first and all of the poems inn television daddy were published in print before we did the show
A: okay
S: So um and I actually have a collection of poems called um television daddy
A: laughing
S: and um so the process of anticipating how I'm gonna embody the poems in voice and in body well um that's kind of redundant
A: laughing
S: um then becomes an inspiration for how to change the poem on the page so if there's a deadline that doesn't do anything for stagecraft I'll go back and I'll change that put more physical imagery in there and it makes it a vastly better poem on the page

How does she engage her audience?

S: um I also love doing um Thing which is a poem based on the um The Addam's Family
A: Oh okay
S: because I really get the audience you know snapping (while snapping fingers) and saying "boo doo doo doo" during the whole poem
A: oh that's fun!

AND

S: um uh cause it's not oral when you're just reading it on the page and so forth um one of my purposes is to involve the audience there's some call and response um to bring in people to appreciating poetry who wouldn't otherwise because poetry people are made to feel afraid of poetry

AND

S: For example one is called "Diesel Dyke" and it was actually published in a lesbian gay bisexual tran tranny magazine literary magazine and um what happened was that um my friend who is happens to be gay was walking along one of our paths we hike together a lot and she was she was doing this by herself and there was a woman on a horse who came by her and said "move over diesel dyke" and like where's the car and she was just trying to insult my friend
A: right
S: so nobody insults my friends without my getting a poem out of it!
A: right (laughing)
S: so she and her partner and I went to a truck stop because I was going to write a poem about a diesel dyke
A: laughing
S: and uh actually I put it into a um an expanded villanelle form and I just love that poem because I was able to take on the point of view of of um a diesel dyke I'm not a diesel dyke you know
A: mhm
S: uh and um it's a lot of word play in it and uh a lot of my gay friends love it for the energy the um validation so I really love that and performing that during The Drive Home show it was the finale poem and I wore you know a big uh wig and I put on a you know a leather jacket you know to look like some kind of badass um a harley person so that's a favorite poem um you know but for the story behind it

How does performance poetry make an impact on audience?  How is it different from poems in print?

A: Um so I know that you were saying that all your poems are print poems first do you think it makes like a bigger impact on an audience to see it performed as opposed to reading it in print?
S: It makes a different impact
A: okay
S: um when we're reading something on the page um we are at our discretion as to how long you will read it we can go back to it uh we can leave it in the bathroom you know so you know all those things affect a reading where you read it uh how often you read it what time of day you read it you know if you read it with somebody else so uh reading silently gives a whole different experience um if you read something aloud that's uh in it's you know it's the medium
A: right
S: if you know it's a different discourse in a sense
A: right
S: um uh cause it's not oral when you're just reading it on the page and so forth um one of my purposes is to involve the audience there's some call and response um to bring in people to appreciating poetry who wouldn't otherwise because poetry people are made to feel afraid of poetry
A: mhm
S: because I'm afraid there's a lot of bad teaching going on about what poetry is
A: yeah
S: and how to appreciate it and so by embodying these and doing multimedia I'm hopinng to bring people to say oh poetry's about me to go listen to people who read poetry to other poets who read looking down and then ultimately to go to the page itself
A: okay
S: So um cause we live in such a multimedia world with so many different kinds of literacy you know I'm trying to pull on people from different literacies to be willing to look at the page

Blog #16

 For my larger research project I plan to focus on the same thing that I focused on in the short analysis project.  I still hope to prove that performance poems are more effective in making an impact on an audience than print poems are, but I plan to shift this so that it explains the opinions of the one poet I interviewed.  

The questions I plan to ask are:
1. How does this poet think her performance poetry impacts her audience?
2. How does my subject feel about performance poetry?
3. How does she engage her audience?
4. Why does performance poetry make such a big impact on audience?
5. What makes it easier for an audience to relate to performance poetry instead of print poems?


I might want to follow up with my interviewee to ask a few more questions, but I want to look deeper into the data I already have before I decide to do that.


My interviewee told me a lot of good stories.  Two of my favorites were about ways she engages the audience and explaining how she came up with her favorite poem.  I would love to use these in my research project, I’m just not sure how to utilize them yet.  I also need to do more analysis on the excerpts I’m using because for the short analysis project I feel like I didn't really analyze the quotes I just described how they related to my focus.

I still need to find articles or other research that will help support my claim.  

Blog #15

Amanda Bowker-Paster

April 1, 2014

Short Analysis Rough Draft

Poems are often viewed as very confusing pieces of literature. Readers of poetry are taught to analyze every nook and cranny of the poem at hand to find the true meaning of the poem. Often times this makes the poem even more confusing and a lot less meaningful. It is difficult to understand and relate to a poem in print because readers are told that there is a specific meaning to the poem, but cannot always decipher what that meaning is. A newer form of poetry, known as performance poetry, is becoming increasingly more popular. This type of poetry involves memorizing a piece of poetry by heart and performing the poem for audience members. Through an interview between interviewer A and interviewee S, it is evident that audiences in today's society can better relate to and are especially impacted by performance poetry as opposed to reading poetry in print.

To start, the interviewee, S, became interested in performing her poetry when she was inspired by seeing another poet recite his work by memory.

A asked S, “So um how did you like transition just from writing poetry to the performance pieces that you do?”

S responded by saying, “um I heard um Phillip Dacey D-A-C-E-Y um read his poetry by heart at the Passaic County Community College poetry center and I was so enamored of that and so um in 2007 I decided that I really need to um have more of my poetry published and um I would like to start readings. I mean I wrote a lot of poetry and I wasn't really out there.”

Earlier in the interview S stated that she had been writing poetry for 63 years. So that means that S was writing poetry in print for about 56 years before she became interested in learning her poetry by heart and performing her pieces. She decided on doing this because she, herself, was an audience member during another poet's performance. All of the reading and writing of poetry that S had done in previous years had not impacted or inspired her enough to want to begin readings. While the readings she did and the poets who inspired her through their print poetry did inspire her to start writing poetry, it took experiencing a form of performance poetry to push S into creating her own performance pieces.

Now that S is an established performance poet, she has her own audience members that she makes a great impact on.

A asked S, “Can you tell me about a specific time that maybe a certain audience member told you that your poetry made an impact on their life?”

S said, “Yes um I had a woman come up to me and um in Television Daddy there's a number of poems of difficult relationship with father and I always catch it in terms of some television thing but that's a way to sometimes if you have something else to look at you can bring out difficult stuff on the side,”

A, “Okay.”

S, “So and she you know uh one of them is about abuse by a father and she said that she was able to get in touch with abuses with her mother and to think about it and to start writing about it”

A, “Mhm”

S, “So there are any number of experiences like that that I've had that's one specific person I know who spoke of it um and I have three different shows a fourth one now that's going to be opening in May and um they're all very different from each other it also helps to stretch me creatively to think about my audiences that I'm building that they need to have some surprises so um one of my shows is Ashes, Ashes a Poet Response to the Holocaust a very profound and consistent response from the audience which is um I've read about the holocaust I've researched the holocaust but I never got it until I saw your performance because you got me on the emotional body level”

A, “Oh wow”

S, “and that's what poetry does it makes us experience something not just rhetorically but as a full body emotional experience so um those you know that's important and and I and in my performances I often talk about the power of poetry in the Ashes, Ashes performance I talk about why it's important to you to experience the poetry of the holocaust because it's too easy to get lost in numbers in fact there is a poem about numbers.”

S speaking about the impact her performance pieces make on her audience members allows us to see how truly life changing performance poetry can be. The fact that audiences can experience these poems on, as S said, “an emotional body level,” allows them to open up and become vulnerable to what the poem is making them feel. S also comments about her “Ashes, Ashes” performance and the consistent comments she gets about how audience members never understood the holocaust before viewing the performance. The holocaust is history that is talked about a lot. By audience members saying that it took S's performance piece for them to really understand it speaks volumes. This comment alone shows how much of an impact a poetry performance makes. Also, S talks about how her “Television Daddy” performance allowed a woman to cope with abuse she endured from her mother. In both instances, S's performance pieces allowed audience to connect to the poems at hand. They were able to relate to them and really feel something because of these performances.

On the other hand, one can argue that print poetry is just as effective as performance poetry; however, because of the way print poetry is taught in school settings audiences shy away from or already have a negative stereotypical view of print poems. The negative thoughts towards poetry automatically creates a wall between a reader and a poem. In performance pieces this wall disappears because it is such a new and almost out of body experience.

A asked S, “Um so I know that you were saying that all your poems are print poems first do you think it makes like a bigger impact on an audience to see it performed as opposed to reading it in print?”

S said, “It makes a different impact.”

A said, “okay”

S said, “um when we're reading something on the page um we are at our discretion as to how long you will read it we can go back to it uh we can leave it in the bathroom you know so you know all those things affect a reading where you read it uh how often you read it what time of day you read it you know if you read it with somebody else so uh reading silently gives a whole different experience um if you read something aloud that's uh in it's you know it's the medium”

A said, “right”

S Said, “if you know it's a different discourse in a sense”

A said, “right”

S said, “um uh cause it's not oral when you're just reading it on the page and so forth um one of my purposes is to involve the audience there's some call and response um to bring in people to appreciating poetry who wouldn't otherwise because poetry people are made to feel afraid of poetry”

A said, “mhm”

S said, “because I'm afraid there's a lot of bad teaching going on about what poetry is”

A said, “yeah”

S said, “and how to appreciate it and so by embodying these and doing multimedia I'm hoping to bring people to say oh poetry's about me to go listen to people who read poetry to other poets who read looking down and then ultimately to go to the page itself”

A said, “okay”

S said, “So um cause we live in such a multimedia world with so many different kinds of literacy you know I'm trying to pull on people from different literacies to be willing to look at the page.”

This excerpt from the interview with S shows that, yes, both print poems and performance poems do impact an audience, but in today's world performance poems impact audience on a different level. Since, as S said, “we live in such a multimedia world,” it is important in today's society for audience members to be reached through many different mediums. In doing performance pieces, S is allowing herself to reach her audience on many different levels. She can involve the audience however she sees fit. She can get a sense of what the audience member's emotions are and can pull on those emotions and use them to her advantage which allows her to make a bigger impact on an audience than a print poem does. Poems in print don't have the advantages that performance poets have. Therefore, it is much more difficult for a poem in print to make a big impact on an audience member in the way that a performance poem can.

The reason performance pieces are more effective than print poetry is because audience members are allowed to feel how they want, experience the poem through different multimedia modes, and are not limited to finding one specific meaning to the poem. Individuals are allowed to believe the poem means whatever they want it to mean. Both performance and print poems do make an impact on an audience, but performance pieces allow poets to reach and connect with audience members in a way that print poetry has a very difficult time accomplishing.