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Potlatch: poetry reading
Mar. 4th, 2009 07:40 pmThe other program item at Potlatch I was involved in was "Invocation Against Entropy: A Chiastic Farrago of Poetry" by John M. Ford and Ursula K. Le Guin (those being the authors of our two Books of Honor).
This was the one of a few evening-entertainments ideas that stayed the course and actually occurred. I got involved with it when Janet Lafler, the organizer, asked me to suggest some UKL poetry and I sent her "The Aching Air", the memorial poem for a cut-down tree that appeared in a small-press book and isn't in UKL's standard poetry collections. I consider it her finest poem.
Janet gathered together that and various other poems, plus a crew of readers, and handed out parts, some of them by request. I got the poem I'd suggested, plus "Count Baln" from UKL's "The Well of Baln", and one of Ford's, "Merlin on a Late Afternoon", in which the wizard rather fussily explains why he manipulated the Arthurian saga the way he did. That one spoke to me.
Not everyone can read aloud well. Even some fluent silent-readers have such a firm direct connection between eye and brain that they have trouble hooking their mouth into the circuit, and wind up stumbling when they read aloud. But everyone on this crew read aloud well indeed.
I've had a little experience acting on stage without scripts in hand, but I prefer reading aloud. Memorizing lines was not as difficult as I'd thought, but I found I had to devote all my mental effort to keeping them memorized, and had little left for interpretation. So I'm happier with a script, where I've practiced and have the lines half-memorized, but can give expression and interpretation my all. We had a good time at Mythcon a couple years ago doing a lightly dramatized scene from The Fall of the Kings by Kushner and Sherman, but poetry? Would anybody come?
They did, actually. We had a good audience for our 40-minute program, including UKL, who wrote us a kind letter of thanks afterwards. We sat in a semi-circle, each standing up and moving forward to do our readings. A few antiphonal or multi-part poems had 2, 3, even 4 readers.
I know that no matter what I do, my readings will sound like me, so I never hesitate in using other people's voices in my head as inspirations. I read "The Aching Air" in the way I've heard UKL read, with a kind of clipped hesitation. I'd thought "Count Baln" would be a good part for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
imnotandrei, who was one of our readers, so when it was assigned to me I just tried to channel him. I doubt he noticed. I never had a chance to hear JMF read, so I let the sense and flow of the words guide me on his poem.
I had practiced them a fair amount. Sometimes it's tough to get exactly the tone you want on a particular phrase when you're approaching it through all that comes before. But it all went well, except when I sat down in the wrong chair. Everybody read excellently, with seriousness dashed with occasional humor.elisem's voice broke slightly at the end of "Mike's Last Sonnet", the one she found on the last day cleaning out JMF's apartment after he died. [His name was John M. Ford but he was called Mike, as I've found I've had to explain to a number of people.]
And the audience seemed happy with the small piece of performing art we crafted out of the work of these fine poets.
Tell me what you think of poetry readings.
This was the one of a few evening-entertainments ideas that stayed the course and actually occurred. I got involved with it when Janet Lafler, the organizer, asked me to suggest some UKL poetry and I sent her "The Aching Air", the memorial poem for a cut-down tree that appeared in a small-press book and isn't in UKL's standard poetry collections. I consider it her finest poem.
Janet gathered together that and various other poems, plus a crew of readers, and handed out parts, some of them by request. I got the poem I'd suggested, plus "Count Baln" from UKL's "The Well of Baln", and one of Ford's, "Merlin on a Late Afternoon", in which the wizard rather fussily explains why he manipulated the Arthurian saga the way he did. That one spoke to me.
Not everyone can read aloud well. Even some fluent silent-readers have such a firm direct connection between eye and brain that they have trouble hooking their mouth into the circuit, and wind up stumbling when they read aloud. But everyone on this crew read aloud well indeed.
I've had a little experience acting on stage without scripts in hand, but I prefer reading aloud. Memorizing lines was not as difficult as I'd thought, but I found I had to devote all my mental effort to keeping them memorized, and had little left for interpretation. So I'm happier with a script, where I've practiced and have the lines half-memorized, but can give expression and interpretation my all. We had a good time at Mythcon a couple years ago doing a lightly dramatized scene from The Fall of the Kings by Kushner and Sherman, but poetry? Would anybody come?
They did, actually. We had a good audience for our 40-minute program, including UKL, who wrote us a kind letter of thanks afterwards. We sat in a semi-circle, each standing up and moving forward to do our readings. A few antiphonal or multi-part poems had 2, 3, even 4 readers.
I know that no matter what I do, my readings will sound like me, so I never hesitate in using other people's voices in my head as inspirations. I read "The Aching Air" in the way I've heard UKL read, with a kind of clipped hesitation. I'd thought "Count Baln" would be a good part for
imnotandrei, who was one of our readers, so when it was assigned to me I just tried to channel him. I doubt he noticed. I never had a chance to hear JMF read, so I let the sense and flow of the words guide me on his poem.I had practiced them a fair amount. Sometimes it's tough to get exactly the tone you want on a particular phrase when you're approaching it through all that comes before. But it all went well, except when I sat down in the wrong chair. Everybody read excellently, with seriousness dashed with occasional humor.
elisem's voice broke slightly at the end of "Mike's Last Sonnet", the one she found on the last day cleaning out JMF's apartment after he died. [His name was John M. Ford but he was called Mike, as I've found I've had to explain to a number of people.]And the audience seemed happy with the small piece of performing art we crafted out of the work of these fine poets.
Tell me what you think of poetry readings.
