As some of you will know, I was down at the Oxford Live Literature Arena at the start of April, which is a weekend of 'performance' events - mainly poetry, but also a little stand-up in the mix there - tagged onto the end of the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival.

Whilst there, I was knocked out - almost literally, I was right at the front! - by Jem Rolls' dynamic and highly physical performance of his poetry. Superb writing, superb delivery, superb all-round performance. But one of the things Jem actually stressed during his performance was that none of his work is published, that he prides himself on NOT being published or even having CDs of his work to flog on these occasions, and that once the words have left his mouth, that's it, they're gone, until next time. Rather like acting, where performances that are never recorded perish with the end of the run or with the actor.

I felt that attitude raised some interesting questions about why we publish. Personally, I can't imagine never publishing my poetry anywhere, while for some a poem doesn't even exist until it's in print somewhere, until others besides the poet have read it. Yet Jem Rolls has performed all over the country - all over the world, in fact - and those poems certainly had a real and very powerful existence during his performance.

So what's the real significance of publishing? And what's the significance of live performance in opposition to that? Has anyone got any ideas that might help me formulate some kind of theory out of those questions?

I think that kind of loyalty to what he does is quite admirable.

It's horses for courses though, I would say.

Some poetry doesn't work when performed - just works better on the page.

And vice versa.

I always thought John Cooper Clarke's work was better when he performed it than how it looked written down.

It was difficult to keep up with him though. That machine gun delivery didn't give one time to digest what he was saying.

Few of my own poems would work in performance. And even the ones that could be, cannot be - I am much to shy to get up and perform them.

So it almost certainly lies in the arena of the poets own ability to project what he/she is trying to convey.

Yes, I agree there. Jem Rolls' loyalty to his principles is admirable. There's something there which speaks to me of artistic integrity, yet I can't quite work out why there should be artistic integrity in not publishing your poetry, but only performing it. On the face of it, it seems a misplaced loyalty. But is it? Especially since, as you quite rightly say, poetry of that kind rarely seems to work as well on the page as in performance. Perhaps because the nuances, cadences, stresses and sheer force of personality that go into making up the poem as a 'whole' simply can't translate to words on a page. Or can they?

As for you being shy, UV Ray ... For once words fail me ...

Not everyone will agree with this but I think if unpublished poets are given the chance to see their work in print, they jump at it, even those poets who claim they think it's better to be unpublished as performers. (Why? Seriously, why is it better?) So I think it's a chip on the shoulder thing, performers v. page poets in the poetry world series, and that split widens when you pretend to understand why it's better for a performance poem not to appear in a magazine. I don't understand why, does anyone else?

>> yet I can't quite work out why there should be artistic integrity in not publishing your poetry, but only performing it. <<

I don't quite understand it either.

However, perhaps he simply wants the poem expressed as he wants? In reading a poem we often form our own interpretations, insert out own inflections, accents and emphasis. I'm thinking perhaps he simply wants to ensure the poem exists as he wants it to exist. It's a form of possessivenes.

Gilgamesh - I don't think so. Some of these performers turn down publishing offers. So the argument that they would jump at the chance does not hold water in all cases.

Jem has had work in print. I published an interview with his girlfriend and one of his poems about 5 years ago.

An interview with his girlfriend? He is a reticent chap, isn't he? :P

Hi all

I can understand the refusal to print his work, on the grounds that performance poetry often doesn't work on the page. But refusing to lay anything down on CD seems a bit excessive! How are people supposed to hear his work if they can't get to one of his gigs? Hats off to him though. He's obviously managing to get by without it, and I guess if world domination isn't his thing then there's no reason he'd want to reach a wider audience. It's a refreshing attitude, if it's genuine and not an attempt at reverse psychology.

Maybe the print thing is also a reaction against the accessibility of poetry publishing these days - it's not that hard to get into an anthology, whether through a writers' group or websites like poetry.com - "Congratulations, you have been selected by our panel of experts to appear in our latest collection. Please pay £50 to receive your own copy and fly yourself to New York to collect it..." You get the impression they've just picked your name at random without even reading the poem.

This guy's work is obviously strong enough to survive without being (type)set in stone. I'm just sorry I won't get to read it!

Lizzie x

The main thrust of this thread I feel centres around the definition of publication.
I think many of the performance poets performing today would regard each of their performances as a live publication.
Phenzwaan from London documents how many times a poem is performed and updates it on his website. His poem 'I write' has been 'published live' to over 400 audiences, someone do the maths of an average audience, add a few t.v.and radio broadcasts and you may see why the rush for print is not really essential for some poets.
Average book prints are blocks of what, say 1,000 if you are lucky and have the blessing of a national publishing and marketing support network.
How many lofts and garages are stacked with boxes of self published books that we couldn't end up giving away?
I think the old attitude of seeing your name in print along with the ethos of being literate, educated and published continues to beckon the many.
I will bury my words when they are ready to be pushed by breath no longer. entombed, sterile, page bound and dead, re read, re read, re read, never said as they were once thought.
The response and feedback is also immediate for a live poet. I have seen persons reacting in quite emotive fashions to poets work, almost life changing experiences and be able to thank the poet or hit them afterwards. Once you have experienced this, simply waiting for book sales and reviews from people you have never met do not seem as attractive.

p.s. how does one publish freestyle or call and response verse? both forms of poetry centred upon the immediate.

I still don't see why you can't do both. Performance and publishing. As for saying, look, this 'live' poem reached 400 audiences, let's think about that seriously for a moment and ask how many of those people could remember more than a few lines once they had got home? If their memory and attention span are anything like mine, not many.

I think this insistence on not putting poems into print but 'keeping them live' is simple posturing for the most part. All it achieves is to ensure your work dies with you. Except for the odd CD, perhaps, if a 'live poet' can bear to pin themselves down long enough to cut one. And don't forget, I love live poetry, or I wouldn't be running this forum or the Poets On Fire resource. I thrive on the challenge and adrenalin and unpredictability of live performance, the way it's different every time - which I agree is something you can't reproduce on paper.

But it's not the only way ...

:P

I think that the role of the audience is the vital thing in a performance, in fact they make it happen really.

If the efforts are aimed at the audience, treating them as passive recipients of the piece then I reckon this misses some tricks, and kind of sets the poet as a kind of priest or hierophant, rather than a participant in the event. But it depends on how developed the performance is. I mean, I've always enjoyed performances which utilised video, installation, sound and theatrical effort, taking the audience dramatically into a space and place. I'm always a wee bit disappointed when someone talks about performance poetry, and it involves someone standing up in front of me and reciting, even if reciting with power. Mind you I've been to some bloody awful displays with, well, accompaniment!

The difference between published poetry and performed poetry is a bit like acting: your performances die with you every day. Text just keeps on going.

The frisson of performance is the frisson of death. We're all dying together, all ephemeral.

[oh my god, I see I'm a poetry virgin!]

Don't worry, Chris, you're only a live poetry virgin! Post another nine times and you'll be able to look yourself in the mirror again. ;)

Being a publisher of poetry, I reach very few readers, possibly less than 50, at least initially. But that little mag stays around and gets picked up every now and again, possibly changes hands, and has a life of its own. For The Nail (my mag) as well, it acts as a social bonding mechanism, bringing together local writers and illustrators, and acting as a sort of almanac of times now/past.

Some performance poetry works well on the page, some doesn't. Generally if you've got something to say and are saying it succinctly, it'll work on the page too, but often it helps if the reader knows your voice already.

Maybe mags with CDs would be good, so you could hear performances and then check them out later, or CDs with urls.

I don't personally hold much sway in being published, as I never send anything off. I don't really believe in the poetry establishment, it's just what hits you right at that time. But I love publishing poetry, I can't say why.

Dave Todd

As a live poet I have been doing my thing on stage for nearly ten years and will be releasing a second collection with my small but formidable publisher next year. My writing is probably under greater influence from published poets such as August Kleinzahler, Fred Voss and Bukowski. I borrow ideas from poets I see on the stage, but to be honest, a few of them could benefit from reading more poetry.
I can't see the obvious schism between page and stage that others tend to harp on about. Someone writes a poem, they read it out loud. It's no biggie. People that overstress the difference probably do so to add to their own kudos. I mention no names.
I really liked the late great Michael Donaghy's approach to writing and performing; he spent so much time intricately re-drafting a poem that by the time the poem was completed it had assimilated itself into his memory. Anyone fortunate enough to have seen Donaghy at the mike would know that not only did he perform every poem from memory, he also performed brilliantly, making poems that seemed complex and intricate on the page shine out with wit and clarity.
I recommend that poets should try memorising their own work, start off with something short and work your way up. Even you pesky poets that say your work is better on the page, try it. The first thing you may notice is that certain lines will keep on slipping your memory, chances are those are the lines that could do with a little touching up. Once the words are part of you, try performing the poem at different tempos, moods, shout, whisper, have some fun.
So yeah, I guess my conclusion is that live poets should think about what their work looks like on the page and lit poets should try memorising some of their work. I really think our art form would be the true benefactor.

Okay, just to bring this discussion back to its origin, I'm really into some of Dreadlock Alien's ideas about publication. Why cant a poet say that the poem is published after it's been performed to an audience, or for that matter, released as a podcast or CD?
Actually, I foresee a big evolutionary leap for poetry when people start listening to poetry gigs or individual poems on their mp3 devices. This will bring live poetry into the same ambience as the poetry printed in books, into waiting rooms and busy train carriages. It gives the live poem the advantage of speaking to the individual rather than the baying, slam card holding mob.
I love the idea of the usual conversation going a bit like this:
"What do you do?"
"I'm a poet."
"Are you published?"
"Yes"
"Faber, Bloodaxe, Cape?"
"No, someone far bigger...I-tunes."

P.S. Has anyone else read Heaney's District and Circle on a district or circle line train? Perhaps Seamus has a sharper commercial mind than Saatchi himself...

This seems to suggest that 'traditional' publishing is a little outmoded. If you could be published in an ideal format (for you) what would it be?

If it seems that I'm calling traditional publishing outdated, then it wasn't intended. I buy a new book of poetry at least once a week, especially hardbacks, as my paperbacks tend to get mashed up. When I worked as a landscape gardener I'd often read a poem at break and let it slosh around my mind as I got back to work.
What I like about the idea of mp3 poetry is that it can be carried around like a book, but also it can be replayed, lines can be rewound and listened to again in the same way that you can re-read a poem or line in a book. This brings aural poetics into a domain that stage poetics fall shy of due to the time based element of the medium.
I really dont see things in terms of a war between formats, with one outmoding the other. I see it in terms of poetics reaching a bigger audience in our expanding multi media frontiers.
As I already seem to have pigeon holed myself as chief dichotomy denier on this forum, I cant help but feel that your question may be a little bit of a trap. When asked what format I would like to see myself in, well its a bit like one of those " If you had to save your mum or dad from a sinking boat..." questions.
Would it seem like a cop out if I pointed out that many poets in other cultures include a CD with their book releases? Or should I say book with CD releases?!? Damn, I think I've let the blinkin' cat out the bag...

It wouldn't seem like a cop out at all ... and I'm not setting any traps. I often wonder why there isn't more poetry on CD. When I was younger I used to buy a lot of those 'actor read' tapes that they used to produce. Even though I found the voices annoying, I really loved to 'receive' poetry in this way. Although I like books, I've always felt there is something very dead about the page ..... poetry for me is a delight in sound as much as a delight in image. That is why I asked about an ideal format .... whether to include film in that, photographys, paintings, doodles, timelines, family trees, links to other poets, sachets of Ethiopian soil, grass cuttings ... whatever. I need to add, I'm asking everyone!

I would like to see a shiny DVD of my Greatest Hits. With Special Features like Editor Interviews, Deleted Poems and Voiceover Commentaries with me explaining how the poem first came about, set against a visual backdrop of me mouthing away silently in an armchair or reciting my poetry whilst playing pool or pottering about the garden or - more likely - driving my car, which is a favourite and very non-green occupation of mine.

:D

Well in that case, I would like every letter of my finest haiku to be spelled out by an array of dubiously obtained cadavers by Dr Gunther von Hagens,

or

tattooed on the buttocks of "West Ham Lass" and revealed letter by letter as the Irons move step by step to next years inevitable Uefa Cup victory.

or

recited by Kurt Angle as he applies the ankle lock to that pillock John Cena. It's true. It's true.

Yeh, and mine would be locked in a snap can at the bottom of a mineshaft somewhere near Barnsley. Oh, hold on ... that's where I left it ... :ph43r:

I want someone to explain to me why you can't send the same poem to different magazines of leaflets or books or whatever it is the written poets write to. People seem very guarded about thier written pieces and who they send them to and who they can't.
why when it is published in another book do other publishers not want it? forgive my ignorance, in the live literature world their is some editing and control but that is usually lead by the poet. I couldn't imagine a venue stopping me from doing a poem I did at their event if I wanted to perform it elsewhere?

Peace and oneness to you and yours.
rich

Yes, that's actually a very interesting and worthwhile question, even though it's never something I've considered in the past because once you get used to the system, I suppose you accept it without question.

A poet - let's say it's me - writes a poem. I want to publish that poem so I can show off how brilliant I am and - in the bigger magazines - maybe get some cash too. The first place I can publish that poem is in a magazine.

But magazines are expensive to produce and the number of people who read poetry magazines is relatively small. If most of the poems in magazines have been published somewhere else, maybe several times, eventually nobody is going to bother buying magazines because they risk seeing the same poems again and again.

By contrast, as people have been saying on another thread, every time a poet performs a poem, the performance - and therefore the poem - is going to be slightly different. Because it's live. Rather like a play being produced differently each time and with different actors. And few poets do the same set every single time they perform. In other words, if you pay a fiver to go to a poetry gig, you're more or less guaranteed a high level level of originality and new material - similar to what you should get in a good poetry magazine. But ONLY if the magazine refuses to publish poems that have been published elsewhere.

Otherwise, it's just like sitting down in front of the telly every night and getting nothing but re-runs of shows we've all seen before. (Yeah, I know, that does actually happen but not on EVERY channel!)

However, there is more to this situation than you realise. Even though I can only publish a poem once in a magazine, I can publish it again in book form later on, i.e. when I have fifty-odd poems and want to publish them all together under my name in a book. So my poems do get seen again in print.

Also, it's perfectly acceptable to republish poems in anthologies too, i.e. collections of poems by lots of different poets, not all by the same poet. It doesn't matter in an anthology if a poem has been published once before or even a dozen times before!

Looking at it like that, although you get your name known first in magazines and then show your range by publishing a whole book, the best place to get a poem published is actually in a good anthology that will last and be reprinted and read by several generations. Because magazines get thrown away and most individual books of poems are only printed in small numbers, but a good and popular poetry anthology can reach vast numbers of people and become - over time - a lasting testimony to the talents of the past. But if you're not in it ....

Of course, I'm only talking here about bona fide poetry anthologies published by well-known or major publishers. Not the rapid turnover anthologies you see advertised in newspapers and commercial magazines, i.e.:

'Are you a poet? Sick of never winning poetry competitions? Send us your poems and we'll tell you how brilliant they are and then publish them along with 2,500 other poems in this anthology which costs £25 a copy - why not buy several and show your poem off to your family?! - and please make cheques payable to Uvbin Dunn Incorporated.'

Talking about publishing your poetry, in the plain-print sense of the word, the best advice I've ever read came from of all places, The Poetry School. poetryschool.com (Never thought I'd ever type that!)
They have an online course, it was £10 aminute ago when I checked. For reasons unknown it is NOT mentioned in their 2007-2008 Programme booklet on page 21.
"Towards a Collection" by Pascal Petit is the first time that I've encountered advice that's actually clever and not the usual mixture of patronising and vague wisps which haunts the writing world. Even reading it makes a difference to how you regard the next poem appearing on your own skyline.OOMPh shines out from the pages.
The same course is mentioned as a ten-weeker,on page 12 at a cost of £95 or £76 for concessions. What that means for the non-Londoner or poverty-struck is between the lines -I just hope the online version still exists for other exiles.
Then ,of course, there's Light's List, once an almost omerta-like secret, now published by Bluechrome. Givers of workshops never mention it, they just hint "Then you send your poetry out to magazines" without giving any names and addresses.
After that, if you are clever enough to be able to work out the current postal rates or lucky enough to live near enough to a working Post Office (to work out SAE rates) you are in with a working chance.
P.S. I have no connection with any of the above mentioned!

Why 'of all places'? Poetry School is the most successful independent organisation for running poetry classes, of all sorts, in the UK and Ireland. I've no idea what online courses will be available in their new brochure, but they will be worth checking out.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, outlines his vision of using ebooks to unite reader and writer without publishers being involved:

http://www.economist.com/business/displays...ory_id=11504752

Except, of course, Amazon will be the conduit through which everyone pays. Natch.

This model presupposes that literature can be successfully democratised and disintermediated. Anyone believe that?