Poetry Choir- Early Draft Q&A

Why are you making us do this?

The idea is to create a choir of voices, to escape the notion of a singular and given reading of a poem. Too often performance poetry is delivered by the writer of said poem, and too often it offers no room for interpretation, no encouragement of the audience’s imagination. The poetry choir would function as an opportunity to work as a collaborative group, to prepare pieces for communal reading. Within that there is the space for individual to interact, and, if they feel it is appropriate, to offer their own interpretation of the writing. There is nothing wrong with wanting to direct the performance. Fundamentally it is trying to get writers and performers to consider how they perform, and what relationship they hold with the audience.

How big is the choir?

The choir can be anything from two voices to a million, whatever the piece demands.

I don’t know you or live near you, can I make my own choir?

Of course. Feel free to perform any of the pieces available, or write your own. If you do write your own then please feel free to post them on this facebook group so that we can discuss, and hopefully perform some of them. Hopefully in the future we can have poetry choir clashes…

Isn’t this just a way of gaining publicity or propping up a single writer’s ego?

Not at all. Entirely

I’m a musician or vocalist. Can I sing or play my pieces?

Yes.

I’m not a confident speaker. Can I just write a piece?

Yes.

If I have any more questions what should I do?

Ask them. If they are important for the whole group I’ll post them up here.

No, really why are you making us do this?

Because I want you to suffer like I do.

Funny story about this-

The original line was: "after all no one comes to see the stripper’s cavities, they come to see the show. "

Hattie read this and pointed out that it wasn't clear I was talking about teeth, and that there were some cavities people did come to see. Hence the clunky edit.

-A