Poetry in Performance — Gillian Wigmore

Hearing a poem read aloud (out loud? "aloud" is a weird word) is more than just the emotion put into the words, more than the stressing of syllables, and more than the reaction of an audience. How much life does a poem get from a reading?

Part of it, I think, comes from things outside of the readings themselves. The audience gets to hear contextual comments answered, answers about the poets inspirations, and such. Knowing what the poet feels about their poems changes or challenges the understanding of the audience because it allows them to see what the poet is like. Knowing the poet's "voice" (and I mean that in its multiple clever implications) lends clarity to meaning. If you had read any of the poet's poems before seeing them live, you already had a clear set of expectations set up for who that poet was, how they thought, and all that. I have to wonder — in our case, did any of you have your expectations shattered? Confirmed? If you had any preconceptions, they were either met (and thus reinforced) or not met (and thus subsequently replaced).

In my case, seeing Gillian perform her poems made me reevaluate how I felt about them. The tone of the poems changed, if not their substance. I left with more questions than I did answers — not because I don't think she wouldn't have been able to clarify, but because the ambiguity I felt was a part of the experience. For example:

In one of her poems (and I wish I'd bought one of her books for reference now), then narrator says that he hid a bottle (of booze). I wanted to know: who was he hiding it from? Himself? Someone else? He said he hid his pen too — did that mean he hid the pen with the bottle? Did he only write drunk? When the narrator refers to the two girls working at the liquor store and then says "Cold beer, wine," is he applying these labels to each girl? Am I meant to apply these labels to the girls' personalities, or is that literally what each girl just happens to sell? Is the narrator... and so on. I had pages of questions that I didn't want to be answered, and in a couple of cases I felt like having them answered for me would be missing the point.

Roland Barthes (name drop) says that when any text is written it is a multifaceted manifestation of different ideas and philosophies, so when a writer puts their ideas to the paper the work is their own. However, the text only gains meaning when interpreted, and can be interpreted in any number of ways. This is where the audience comes in, after all. Reader-response theory and all that; the voice of the author, the text itself, and the audience's reception all come into play in any reading.

I don't really have a way to wrap this up, so instead of closing properly, I'll say that if anything in the above paragraphs has interested in, check out some Barthes. You can find a pretty okay summary here:

If you are anyway familiar with Barthes, skip that video because it is heavily simplified. If you watch it, think on how to apply what Barthes is saying to a live performance of — or just the normal reading of — poetry.