Performing poetry

Performing a selection of poems at the Shelley Memorial Project Celebration of Poetry

On Saturday 12th October 2024, I had the honour of performing my poetry at the Shelley Memorial Project Celebration of Poetry event, alongside Liz Barnes, Simon Zec, Chris Hardy, Barry Smith and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin author, Louis de Bernières.

The celebration came hot on the heels of the publication of my debut poetry pamphlet, Silence & Selvedge, and it was my first time of selling - and signing - copies of my work after the event. I’ve published ten ghostwritten novels and will never tire of the thrill of a new book in print, but seeing Silence & Selvedge being distributed to strangers in the audience was special.

Having done a number of live poetry events in the last couple of years, it strikes me that what I enjoy most about them, beyond the thrill of sharing the poems themselves, is the opportunity to introduce individual poems and place them in a little bit of context.

On the page, poems have layers of meaning that can be returned to again and again. In front of an audience, there is only one shot at getting an idea across. But poetry often makes more sense with a word or two of introduction and explanation, even if only to identify something about the circumstances which led to the writing of the poem. I wonder why we make it ‘difficult’ for readers of poetry to expect them to navigate poems without this aid.

I recently re-read John McCullough’s excellent 2016 collection, Spacecraft. I enjoyed being able to clearly orientate myself with the poems which were introduced in memoriam.

A novel usually has a blurb, and readers have some idea of the storyworld they are about to enter. Poetry already demands an awful lot of its readers. Why shouldn’t we make it less mysterious and ethereal? I’d love to publish my next poetical works with a sentence of introduction to each poem. We’ll see.