I just came home from a literary event which I helped to organise, and I got some lovely feedback (from audience, not speakers, thankfully). I’m a relative newbie at reading my own poems in particular, despite having recited some Heaney and Yeats at an event last July, and I found it difficult to decide how best to approach speaking.
I had this question going through my head when I was asked to read at a poetry event in Alboraya, a village just outside Valencia in June. I had a poem that felt urgent and I think that the crowd almost felt scared by my overblown theatricality during delivery. Afterwards I reasoned that maybe I had gone too far too fast.
So my question is, how do you like your poetry delivered? With gusto? With boiling rage? With raw emotion and urgency? With quiet passion? Slowly and deliberately enunciated? Or with humour and self-deprecation?
Answers on a postcard please. Expect a new(ish) poem soon.