From Totally Terrified to Merely Uneasy
How to Prepare for a Poetry Reading, Spoken Word Event or Poetry Slam

By: Diane Gallo, WSKG's Poet-in-Residence

First a few working definitions:

• POETRY READING - Exactly what it says. Readers come up to the podium and read a poem - one of their own original works or a poem by someone else.
• SPOKEN WORD EVENT - Exactly what it says. The poems take on a new life on the lips of a poet or performer who offers the audience anything from a simple reading to a full-tilt performance:

a good clear smooth reading directly from the page

a Reader's Theater delivery (as above, with emotion and gesture)

a good recitation (smooth, clear and memorized)

a performance (memorized, smooth and clear, with emotion and gesture

• SLAM - Exactly what it says ... sort of. A poetry slam is a competition with rules and regulations. Often working in teams, competitors memorize original poems under three minutes long and perform them for an audience. Scoring is done as for an Olympic event ... scores of 0-10 with decimal points to break ties ... five points for content and five points for performance. Three - five judges who are most often strangers off the street or from the audience serve as the judges.

Memorizing Tips:

These tips are excerpted from Poetry Slam:The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry edited by Gary Mex Glazner; Manic D Press, Box 410804, San Francisco, CA 9414. Under the heading of Memorizing a Poem, there's a lively exchange of e-mails from the SLAM Listserv (subscribe-slam@datawranglers.com) that covers many of the possible ways one can go about memorizing a poem. Although every creative mind works differently, one of these suggestions is bound to help.

Just do the first line or pair of lines - or the first "chunk" - 10 times, then move on to the next line or two. Keep doing that until you've got the whole poem under control.

Tape your poem and play it while you're walking around or driving or doing some mindless chore. Say the lines with the tape.

Move around while you say it - While you mow the lawn or sweep the floor. This can help those of us who are kinesthetic learners. This also helps you to perform on your feet.

Add 20 minutes of yoga and 10 minutes of meditation to your daily schedule. Sit in the sun for 20 minutes a day, sleep regular hours in a completely dark room, eat sanely, drink lots of water. etc. Ditch drugs and alcohol. Try memorizing immediately following meditation.

Carry a little cassette recorder in your pocket to record thoughts and fragments and to help you memorize poems.

Magical Memorization: Glue the poem to your forehead til it seeps through your skull. Tuck your poem in your back pocket til it seeps up through your brain.

Note to Elementary teachers. Something contrary about this, but kids in younger grades often take on the memorization without being asked - especially when you assure them they can keep the paper with them. All it takes is one kid doing it and they all start doing it.
 

Other Comfort Tips ...

First, love your poem. Whether you write the poem yourself, use a friend's poem or find a poem in a book of poetry, care about it.

Pair up with a partner and read your poems aloud to each other. As you listen, take notes and ask your reader questions. If your reader has difficulty reading your poem or trips over a line, look at the line more closely. It may need a slight change.

Read aloud your poem to a partner three times. The first time, read with exaggerated slowness - almost syllable by syllable. This will make you feel foolish - but stay with it and notice what happens when you slow it down. The second time read loudly and clearly at a moderate speed. The last time, in a more relaxed way.

Have fun and let your personality come up on stage with you. Those funny, personable things you might do can help you relax and help the audience relax too.

Open with energy and strength.

Give the audience clear closure. Signal the audience in some way that youÕre done - say thank you, step to the side, bow - whatever seems right.

If you have nerves - sing on the way to the reading. Sing something soothing that requires you to pace your exhalations.

If you're reading from a text, print out your poem in LARGE POINT SIZE that's easy to see from a distance.

Have a clipboard or notebook to rest your poem on. You might shake, but your paper won't.

Use a music stand instead of a podium unless you need the podium to keep your knees from buckling.

Wear fuss-free comfortable clothes. Obsess about your appearance before you leave the house.

Comb your hair in a way that does not hide your eyes or face. For the same reason, avoid hats or anything that will block eye contact with the audience.

Bring lozenges for your throat and dry mouth.

Enjoy your jitters and have a good time.

Classroom Poetry Activities

1. How does a poem look? Put a poem side by side with other kinds of writing. What differences do you see? What do you notice about punctuation? Make a list on the board.

2. How does a poem sound? Read a poem quietly to yourself. Then read the same poem aloud to a neighbor. Listen to your neighbor read the same poem aloud. In pairs, small group or general classroom discussion, ask: WhatÕs the difference between quiet reading and out loud reading? Which way do you like it better? Why?

3. Performance: Working in groups of 3-5, ask students to choose and perform a poem for the class using any performance techniques they saw in the show or any ideas they can think of themselves. Tell them to "think theatre".

4. Writing: Take a classic and bend it out of shape. Working as a class or in small groups, ask students to pick a favorite nursery rhyme or poem. See if you can write a stanza or two that totally changes how the poems turn out. Or see if you can find a way to update or "jazz" it up. Perform the new piece for the class.

April is National Poetry Month!

Celebrate National Poetry Month - any time of the year - with these ideas from the Academy of American Poets - in association with the Dodge Poetry Festival, the National Council of Teachers of English, and Teachers & Writers Collaborative. For more ideas, visit the Academy of American Poets website at http://www.poets.org

GREAT IDEAS: Create a class or school poem using a central theme or idea and ask each student and teacher to contribute one line. (The one line can be performed in groups or "stanzas."). Tape students reading their own poems or poems by others. Organize a student poetry reading at the local library, bookstore or coffee shop. Read a poem over the school's public address system each morning or start each class with a poem by a different poet. Create and send poetry greeting cards to celebrate National Poetry Month - or any special occasion.

Web page links:

• Dodge Foundation Poetry Festival & Poetry Programs for Teachers and Students: www.grdodge.org

• Poets & Writers: www.pw.org

• Subscribe to a poem a day:  info@daytips.com

BIBLIOGRAPHY

- Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry, edited by Gary Mex Glazner; Manic D Press, Box 410804, San Francisco, CA 94141. 2000

- The Oxford Treasury of Children's Poems, edited by Michael Harrison and Christopher Stuart-Clark; Oxford University Press, New York, NY 10016. 1994.

- Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize, edited and introduced by John Hollander; Turtle Point Press, Chappaqua, NY. 1996.

- Hand in Hand: An American History through Poetry collected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, illustrations by Peter M. Fiore. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY. 1994.

- Pass It On: African-American Poetry for Children. Selected by Wade Hudson, illustrated by Floyd Cooper. Scholastic, Inc. New York, NY. 1993.

- Here is My Kingdom - Hispanic American Literature & Art for Young People. Edited by Charles Sullivan. Harry Abrams, Inc., New York, NY. 1994.

About the Author:

Diane Gallo is an award-winning fiction writer, screenwriter and poet who believes the word was meant to be heard on the stage as well as read on the page. As co-founder of the Association of Teaching Artists - and experienced with both elementary and upper grade levels as well as with teacher in-service programs - she is knowledgeable about major arts-in-education issues including integrating arts into the curriculum and assessment strategies as they relate to the NYS Standards.

A master teaching artist whose programs and presentations receive consistently high reviews, Diane works extensively with thousands of students and teachers in arts-in-education and Lincoln Center model programs across New York including the Southern Tier Institute for Arts in Education program.

The Mid-Atlantic Foundation's Creating for the Millennium - Artists & Communities program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts recently named her one of America's 250 most gifted community artists. Currently, Diane serves as WSKG's advisor and poet-in-residence to Poetic License - a program to engage Southern Tier teens in Spoken Word events. Visit her website at : www.dianegallo.com

Fat-free

sugar-free

tax-free

poetry 

Poems are delicious -

eat one today.

Poem is a four letter word.

                                                ~ general knowledge

Funded, in part, by ITVS’s COMMUNITY CONNECTION PROJECT (CCP) 
and by the National Center for Outreach 

Sponsored by WSKG and community partners
(Mental Health Association, Binghamton City School District, Your Home Public Library in JC)

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