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.
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