The Out Loud: Giving a Great Poetry Reading

Hi, folks! Let me introduce Michelle Hartman, a guest writer for PoettoPoet. An experienced reader and a frequent attendee to poetry events, Michelle is the perfect person to give us advice on performing our poetry. Enjoy her article, then check out her book!

A little about Michelle: A Pushcart nominee, Michelle Hartman's work can be found in Crannog, Poetry Quarterly, The Pedestal Magazine, Raleigh Review, San Pedro River Review, Pacific Review, Concho River Review, RiverSedge, Illya’s Honey, among others, and numerous anthologies. She is also editor of the award-winning journal, Red River Review, www.redriverreview.com, as well as a past president of The Dallas Poets Community. Her first book, Disenchanted and Disgruntled, from Lamar University Press is available on Amazon here: Michelle's book of poems.

Giving a Great Poetry Reading

If you are like most people the last time you read anything out loud it was a Dick and Jane book. You were six and the other kids might have made fun of you. And now you’ve been invited to read your work in public. It’s Mrs. Edleman’s class all over again. But it does not have to be. There are simple tips and tricks to help you learn to read like Billy Collins.

If you are phobically shy or prone to panic attacks you might want to speak with your doctor first. But for the rest of us who were simply never trained to read in public, the following can get you ready to give a Frank Sinatra performance.

My first and best advice is, go to a poetry workshop. I belong to a free read-and-critique group called the Dallas Poets Community, with two workshops a month. You read your poem and then someone else reads it after so that you can hear it in another voice. This gives you the experience of reading in a small friendly group before launching out into the world.

Once a month, the DPC holds an Open Mic, inviting a professional to open, and then anyone who signs up reads later. This gives a poet a chance to see a pro and ask questions. Check us out in the Dallas area: http://www.dallaspoetscom.org But wherever you are, a workshop group can help. Or use your family as an audience, but practice, practice, practice. That way you are comfortable with the poem, itself.

Second, go to some readings and pay close attention to the way the poet reads. What do you like or dislike about the way the poet presents his or her work aloud? Maybe you like certain forms of delivery, but be sure it suits your work. Not all poems can be read the same way. Practicing articulation is even more important than slow speed. Avoid monotone delivery and sing-song delivery. You can record yourself on software like GarageBand and analyze your style. We are our own harshest critic. When you are comfortable with your work then you are doing your best.

Do have your poems ready - it is not fun to watch a poet flip through a book and mumble to himself. Breeeeeeeeeethe... and pause before you start. Take it s l o w l y, but make it short! If you feel you're rushing we won't hear you. Start with one poem and work up to a full routine.

 

Don't try! Simply hear yourself speak - if you're listening to thoughts about what you just said or are about to say then you're not 'PEARL': Presently Engaged And Really Listening'. Don't over explain – trust the reader and the listener. A short lead in such as 'My girlfriend once said -------- to me' then go into the poem. Or 'My ex-girlfriend used to do this' and go into the poem - just something to tease their expectations and FRAME the poem in their minds. Poems obviously should stand alone, in live performance the audience doesn't have unlimited time to check references, re-read lines, explore possibilities. It is a singular experience, so a little help is good.

Don't try anything too theatrical, but equally, allow yourself to feel the words and subject matter. There's nothing worse than watching a performer who seems indifferent to their own work - it makes the audience indifferent too. Match your material to your audience. Nothing will ever scare you as badly as showing up with a pile of erotic poems and learning most of your audience are evangelicals. Make sure you have sufficient material both in quality and quantity. Maintain eye contact with the audience whenever possible. If your eyes are looking down it is more difficult to build a relationship.

At the end of a poem, don't rush into the next one. A short pause will help the audience absorb the poem you've just read and prepare for the next one. I've seen many poets finish one poem, immediately say "and," then launch into the next piece, as if they were lumping the whole reading into a continuous poem. One thing I do is memorize the last lines of the poems. Then, when I am finishing a poem, I lower the paper even further and finish looking completely at the audience. This also gives them a cue that the poem is over, although it's pretty obvious when mine are done.

If your poems are on sheets of paper, make sure they're on a clipboard or something solid so the pages don't shake as you read--this can be both visually and aurally distracting. Avoid long, dangly earrings and bunches of bracelets (especially if you talk with your hands). I have actually seen poets who were drowned out by the sound of jangling jewelry. Also avoid wearing wild patterns; your clothes should not be putting on their own show. A corollary of this is comfortable clothes and hairdo so that you are not constantly fidgeting and adjusting. Deep poetry is not conducive to wardrobe malfunctions.

Finally, if you can project to the audience and the venue accommodates it (and your nerves permit it), don't stand behind the podium, unless your poetry needs the distancing it will provide. I believe that it's easier to connect with members of the audience if you stand directly before them. This requires more practice, more control of body language, and a bit more courage. But you will get there. Remember, we all started out exactly where you are, and I do not know a single poet who was harmed at a poetry reading.

"Is my poem good?"

In workshops and classrooms, at conferences and the coffeehouse, writers ask me, "Is my poem good?"

Hate to say it, but the reader is the only one who can answer you, and each one is different. Even as a reader, I might say, "This poem stirs my heart, tickles my brain, makes me laugh, punches me in the gut." But does that make it good? Possibly.

"But good enough?" the poet presses me. Relax for a minute. Throw your beret on the coffee table. Let's talk. What most of us want to know is:

• Does my work inspire someone besides me? 
• Do I have talent?
• Is my work publishable?
• Will a press ever publish my book?
• Can I get accepted into an MFA program with these poems?

 Again, tough to answer. One way to find out is to submit your work and see what happens. Apply to the program and see what happens. Put together a collection and submit to small presses and contests. Your work will either float, so to speak, or it won't. Even if it doesn't, your poems might be good. Rejected, but good.

So I can't tell you if your poem is good. BUT, I can offer you a Poem Score Card. This is a self-appraisal, which means that you can lie to yourself, but be honest. See how your poem scores.

• Images (0-5 points)
  A perfect five looks like this: The poem includes concrete words that refer to objects, phrases that engage the reader's senses, figures of speech, active verbs, and specific nouns.
• Voice (0-5 points)
  A perfect five looks like this: The poem uses unusual word combinations, fresh turns of phrase, flavorful wording; it posits a specific world view, conveys a personality, and creates a character that the reader wants to hear from.
• Sound (0-5)
  A perfect five looks like this: The poem repeats consonants, repeats vowels, varies short and long phrases musically, avoids clumsy rhymes, pulses with an underlying beat or beat pattern, uses harsh letters (such as T and K) to convey harshness, uses soft letters (such as S and M) to convey softness, uses repetition of words or phrases.
• Form (0-5)
  A perfect five looks like this: The poem's lines break at interesting places. The white space is used deliberately. Stanzas cohere or follow a plan, and their lengths harmonize. Line lengths follow a pattern or vary intentionally.
• Substance (0-5)
  A perfect five looks like this: The poem offers a new insight, shares a unique perspective, explores a human truth in a fresh way, teaches about a little-known part of the world or human activity, or conveys a hard-earned lesson.

Still want to know if your poem is good? See if you can take The Poem Vow.

Repeat after me:

I, (your name), do solemnly affirm that I have used my imagination, my wisdom, my ingenuity, and my best writing skills to make this poem bloom fully. I further affirm that I have considered every line, every word, every figure of speech, and that I have given it everything it needs to go out into the world. I now release it to live the best life it can.

If you can take the Poem Vow, then don't pull out your hair trying to decide if the poem is good. Work hard on it, then send it out. Wave your handkerchief to it at the Post Office, if you must, but set it free.

Writing Prose Poems

Welcome to my prose poem binge! In the last few weeks, I've written most of my poems in paragraphs rather than lines. I start a sentence and just keep on typing, ignoring phrase endings, commas, weighty words – all places where I usually press RETURN. The momentum carries forward like an ocean wave, not breaking until the shore of the final period.  One reward: figuring out which topics lend themselves to prose poems and how to use this form effectively.

Poems that tell a story lend themselves to prose poems.  Makes sense, right?  The difference between fiction and the prose poem, though, is brevity and language play.  Instead of a full story, we usually get a single scene.  Or just an action.  Or one memory.  Also, most sentences contain sensory details, figures of speech, creative turns of phrase, or sound devices.  This is where the "poem" part of "prose poem" earns its name.

Poems with a strong voice make good prose poems.  If a character starts speaking and won't shut up, give her some free rein by letting the line run all the way to the margin and wrap around to the next line.  Create a persona.  Readers enjoy hearing a particular personality express itself -- as long as the language is tight, rings true, and captures interest.

Casual poems benefit from the prose form.  A lined poem seems to announce itself as a serious item, just by its form on the page.  Meanwhile, the prose poem greets us with a familiar wave.  It uses humor, sentence fragments, and slang with nonchalance.  Since a short paragraph doesn't intimidate, you can write one of these in your flip flops.  Just don't forget the basics of strong writing: active verbs, specific nouns, few adjectives, and fewer adverbs.

Sound-rich poems work well in prose.  Try repeating consonants in clusters to create sonic interest.  Do the same with vowels.  Rhythm and momentum make the poem flow or jerk or tumble forward.  Direct that flow with punctuation.  Without the line and white space to control pacing, turn to the period, comma, semi-colon, colon, and dash to speed up and slow down.  Try following a long sentence with a short one.  Like this.  Consider using repetition.  Repeating a word or phrase creates a series of dots for the reader to connect, so it benefits structure as well as sound.  A prose poem is an especially good place to use rhyme because no line endings will draw undue attention to it.

The best way to learn how to write prose poems is to read some.  I enjoy Mary Oliver's.  My own "Guatemala" is a favorite of my readers, which I'm reading below.  Enjoy writing one of your own!

What the Judge is Looking For

A renovated warehouse + cookies + guitar music + people reading poems.  It adds up to a lovely evening at Trinity Valley Community College's Poetry Festival.  I just drove home from it, and I can report that the creative vibes of the evening are still with me!

To celebrate National Poetry Month, TVCC invites a poet to give a reading and judge their student poetry contest.  The top student poets receive recognition, and all the poems appear in a journal.  This year, I was honored to be their visiting poet and judge.  THANKS to everyone who made the event such a success!

As I listened to the winning poems tonight, I remembered the qualities that made me choose each one.  A great image here, a clever line there.  An unusual topic.  A musical cadence.  They sounded even better in person!

In the back of my mind, though, I also recalled poems that fell short of their potential.  Actually, I didn't recall the poems themselves, but the missteps that landed them in the "no" pile.  Any of the contest entries could have been great poems, but only a few stood out.  How did those few grab my attention?  I'll tell you.

A few weeks ago, a bulging envelope arrived, and I sat down with a two-inch stack of poems.  My assignment: whittle it down to ten.  In the first pass, I hoped to find
1) sensory language that made me imagine sights, sounds, smells, and taste
2) metaphors, simile, personification, or other figures of speech
3) interesting topic choice
4) concrete details
5) sound play beyond predictable rhymes

With this, I eliminated more than half.  Poems that used all abstractions or rhymed in a nursery way, I set aside immediately.  Poems about love (which was most of them!) got boring fast.  Very short and very long poems felt like drafts.

Next, I reread.  Now I looked for:
1) complex emotional situations
2) heft or gravitas in the issues raised by the poem
3) humor that made me laugh, but also revealed a new perspective
4) a strong voice that used fresh language
5) harsh situations articulated with harsh sounds, like "t" and "ck"
6) gentle situations articulated with gentle sounds like "sh" and "w"
7) meaningful line breaks
8) meaningful arrangement on the page and use of white space

This gave me a stack of about twenty.  I read a third time and a fourth.  Only a handful of these twenty revealed a little more every time.  Those turned out to be the winners.  Poems that kept me coming back.

I've judged about twenty contests in recent years, and I'm going to confess something:  There's no foolproof way to rank or even fairly compare equally solid poems.  Sometimes a clear "best one" emerges, but more often I'm left agonizing, trying to find a reason to choose one over another.  At this point, each judge will go with her gut.  For me, this means asking myself crazy stuff like which poem I would want a copy of or which poem I wish I had written.  I might feel pulled to poems that touch on experiences I've had or philosophies I agree with.  I might pick a poem that seems more novel and unusual or one that attempts something challenging.  It's just plain unpredictable.

But, this is comforting.  It means that your poem might be very good and still not take first place.  Once it's polished to shine as much as possible, you can relax and not worry so much about what the results mean.  I enter contests, too, and I'm going to try taking my own advice.

Meanwhile, I hope the students at tonight's Festival enjoyed themselves, win or lose.  Just the act of writing is life-affirming and worthwhile.  To all the writers in that room:  Stay creative and keep writing!