Performance poetry
The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (January 2016) |
Performance poetry is a broad term, encompassing a variety of styles and genres. In brief, it is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience.
History
The phenomenon of performance poetry, a kind of poetry specifically made for and offered during a performance before an audience goes back to Dada, the term itself only emerged later. On June 23, 1916, Hugo Ball performed one of the first sound poems, Gadji beri bimba at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, dressed in a cardboard costume so that he had to be carried onto the stage.[1] The actual birthplace of performance poetry is therefore Zürich. Since then the spectrum ranges from Kurt Schwitters’ own recitation of his wellknown Ursonate to the recitations of "otto's pug" by German poet Ernst Jandl and a typ of performance that is mixed from impromptu speech, body language and theatricality such as Natias Neutert’s Diogenes Synopsis’’.[2]
The term performance poetry originates from an early press release describing the 1980s performance poet Hedwig Gorski, whose audio recordings achieved success on spoken word radio programs around the world.[3] Her band, East of Eden Band, produced music and poetry collaborations, allowing cassettes of her live radio broadcast recordings to stay in rotation with popular underground music recordings on some radio stations. Gorski, an art school graduate, tried to come up with a term that would distinguish her text-based vocal performances from performance art, especially the work of performance artists, such as Laurie Anderson, who worked with music at that time.
Performance poets relied more on the rhetorical and philosophical expression in their poetics than performance artists, who arose from the visual art genres of painting and sculpture.
The National Endowment for the Arts categorized performance art within the visual arts judging panels; it originally placed performance poetry within the category of theater before correcting it to literature in the 21st century. Since many performance poets did not have publications, the former classification made performance poets categorically ineligible for the NEA fellowship funding or recognition. Their audio cassettes were not acceptable sample material for literature grant consideration. A stated objection to this presentation method protested their performance poems translated into text on paper could not compete with poetry written for print publication. The National Endowment for the Arts is now accepting varied presentations for publication verification for poetry fellowship applicants, including audio recordings that have no printed versions of the poems. Performance poetry with music peaked during the 1980s just as performance art peaked in the 1970s.[citation needed]
During that time, San Francisco and New York were the centers for this type of activity; however,
Jewell deserves special mention as a transitional figure, younger than the aforementioned, and one not especially rooted in the Beats like Gorski who has strong connections to
Performing poets-writers and especially performance poets excelled in the ability to put the event of oral literature into the primary social/communicative function for literature. The plurality of the literary performance is under the control of the poet/writer, and the performer never minimizes the participation of the audience members. It is important to remember that performance was the primary distribution method for poetics since tribal times and ancient Greece. As Gorski often states, broadcast and technology surpass books in reaching mass audiences for poetry, and just as writing poetry for print made poetry a completely different artform since the invention of the book, audio "mediums influence the way poets write just as they do painters and sculptors".
Today, performance poetry is also being used as a means to promote literacy in public school systems. Global Writes Inc. has been incorporating technology, such as videoconferencing and podcasts, into literacy programs as a means for students to share their poetry. Performance poetry also provides avenues for students to perform their poems onstage.[6]
Poetry in oral cultures
Performance poetry is not solely a
Advent of printing
Although popular works, including popular poems or collections of poems, were already being distributed for private reading and study in manuscript form, there can be little doubt that the introduction of cheap printing technologies accelerated this trend considerably. The result was a change in the poet's role in society. From having been an entertainer, the poet became primarily a provider of written texts for private readings. The public performance of poetry became generally restricted, at least in a European context, to the staging of
20th century
The early years of the 20th century saw a general questioning of artistic forms and conventions. Poets like Basil Bunting and Louis Zukofsky called for a renewed emphasis on poetry as sound. Bunting in particular argued that the poem on the page was like a musical score; not fully intelligible until manifested through sound. This attitude to poetry helped to encourage an environment in which poetry readings were fostered. This was reinforced by Charles Olson's call for a poetic line based primarily on spoken human breath.[7] Clive Sansom devoted much of his life to gathering and contributing poetry and drama particularly suited to performance by children.
During the 1950s, the American poet Cid Corman began to experiment with what he called oral poetry. This involved spontaneously composing poems into a tape recorder. Allen Ginsberg was to take up this practice in the 1960s. David Antin, who heard some of Corman's tapes, took the process one step further. He composed his talk-poems by improvising in front of an audience. These performances were recorded and the tapes were later transcribed to be published in book form. Around the same time, Jerome Rothenberg was drawing on his ethnopoetic researches to create poems for ritual performances as happenings.
The writers of the
In Britain, sound poets like Bob Cobbing and Edwin Morgan were exploring the possibilities of live performance. Cobbing's groups Bird Yak and Konkrete Canticle involved collaborative performance with other poets and musicians and were partly responsible for drawing a number of the poets of the British Poetry Revival into the performance arena.
Meanwhile, many more mainstream poets in both Britain and the
The 1970s and after
This section possibly contains original research. (January 2016) |
By the 1970s, three main forms of poetry performance had emerged. First was the poetry reading, at which poems that had been written for the page were read to an audience, usually by the author. Poetry readings have become widespread and poetry festivals and reading series are now part of the cultural landscape of most Western societies. However, most people would not consider the poetry readings of this type as part of the performance poetry phenomena.
This leaves two types of poetry performance: poems written specifically for performance on the
In the U. S., the rise to prominence of the
The Beat Poets were the first to popularize crossing over into recorded media to distribute their performed poetry. The best-known Beat poet,
Performance poetry has also been boosted considerably by the appearance of
Hispanic performing artists, such as Pedro Pietri, Miguel Algarín, Giannina Braschi, and Guillermo Gómez-Peña, are known for their humorous and politically charged attacks against American imperialism. Later contemporary Latino poets such as Willie Perdomo, Edwin Torres (poet) and Caridad de la Luz would follow in this tradition.
Closely tied to
In France, fr:Lucien Suel, Akenaton, and many other represents the way of performance poetry.
Setsuko Chiba is a Japanese poet and artist who takes the theatrical way of performance poetry since her debut in East Village in New York.[citation needed]
In the
In 2018 the
The United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, many avant-garde poets are deeply committed to live exposition of work, moving on from Cobbing and his peers. Well-known names include
However, the emergence of performed poetry as a popular art form can probably be linked to Allen Ginsberg's performance at the Albert Hall in 1965 at the
Apples and Snakes, a collective promoting performance poetry in pubs and at festivals, was started by Mandy Williams, PR Murry and Jane Addison in London in 1982 inspired by the work of New Variety/CAST. They worked with 'ranting poets' such as Attila the Stockbroker and Seething Wells and other poets and musicians with a political message such as Billy Bragg. Apples and Snakes continues today, 31 years later, as a national organisation. In the 90s, however, in big cities like Manchester and London, a different style emerged that was influenced more by hip hop with much less emphasis on comedy in the manner of Def Poets in the United States. Well-known writers from this evolution include Lemn Sissay and the late Dike Omeje from the Manchester scene and Roger Robinson and El Crisis from the London circuit.
On the experimental front, there has been fresh emphasis on collaborative choreographed stage work focused on poetry. ShadoWork, for instance, disrupts and enriches the conventional regimes of author, text and audience by combining (simple) theatrical movement with the full range of voice and stage in ways designed to draw deeper attention to the text.[18] This represents a 'counter-cultural' mode of performance poetry which shuns bald entertainment value.[19] Other initiatives such as Lyrikal Fearta by Jonzi D have shaped street-based art for the stage, extending spoken word to short prose productions and fusing performance poetry with dance.
British performance poetry continues to thrive at a grassroots level, with performances in
See also
- Nuyorican Poets Café
- Australian performance poetry
- Hedwig Gorski
- Language poets
- List of performance poets
- Literary movements
- Poetry reading
- Slam poetry
- Spoken word
- Anti-poetry
References
- ^ Cf.Reinhart Meyer u. a.: Dada in Zürich und Berlin 1916–1920. Literatur zwischen Revolution und Reaktion. Scriptor, Kronberg Ts 1973, ISBN 3-589-00031-7.
- ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20080215202529/http://www.literaturbuero-freiburg.de/cms/index.php?id=228
- ^ Wheeler, Lesley. Voicing American Poetry: Sound and Performance from the 1920s to the Present. Cornell U P, 2008.
- ISBN 978-1-4276-0475-0
- ^ Wheeler, Lesley. Voicing American Poetry: Sound and Performance from the 1920s to the Present. Cornell U P, 2008.
- ^ "What We Do". Global Writes. Retrieved January 24, 2016.
- ^ 'The Poetry of Charles Olson: A Primer', Thomas F. Merrill, University of Delaware Press (1982) p.53. ISBN 9780874131963.
- ^ a b "E a s t o f E d e n B a n d". Archived from the original on 2020-10-17. Retrieved 2023-08-09.
- ^ Documented in JAST during an interview with Robert Creeley on TV, Austin Chronicle, and hedwiggorski.com
- ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-03-28. Retrieved 2011-10-10.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) TV interview 1982 Hedwig Gorski and Robert Creeley discuss Beats in the context of performance poetry. - ^ "Slampoetry 2022 - Co je slam poetry? Ve zkratce…".
- ^ "Prague's Indie Writing Scene @ DiverCity Week and Prague Microfestival". 12 April 2017.
- ^ "About Alchemy".
- ^ "Alchemy Readings & Performances Series (2002-2018) > Michaela Freeman: Portfolio and Blog". April 17, 2013.
- ^ a b Fernanda, Seavon (March 2022). "INSTANTNÍ NOSTALGIE". A2 (5/2022): 11.
- ^ "Manifesto — OBJECT:PARADISE".
- ^ Gironès, Cristina (16 February 2022). "Object Paradise, el colectivo artístico que quiere devolver la vida y la voz al barrio de Žižkov". Radio Prague International. Radio Prague International.
- ^ National Association of Writers in Education; 'ShadoWork - Poets Doing the Unthinkable'; Writing in Education, 1999, issue 17.
- ^ 'Making Voices: Identity, Poeclectics and the Contemporary British Poet', New Writing 3:1, 2006, pp.66-77. DOI: 10.2167/new058.0
- ISBN 978-0-8014-7442-2
- ^ BBC. "BBC Radio 4 - Poetry Slam 2007". Retrieved January 24, 2016.
- ISBN 9780745338132.