Are you part of a local poetry group that meets for readings and open mics? I’ve been attending our local Fraser Valley Poets Society open mics and other functions for upwards of ten years now! It’s been a great place to share work, get practice in reading, even sell books.
For some of those years I’ve been the group’s webmaster. I still am. That means I try to put up a post on our site’s blog after each reading. This involves taking photos of our events and figuring out what to say about them.
Our most recent open mic was last Monday. I snapped away during the reading and came home with a camera full — images of our readers with a variety of facial expressions and in various poses. All those shots reminded me of how doing a public reading involves so much more than just parroting the words on the page (or phone).
Image courtesy Pixabay.com
Reading a poem
Reading a poem’s
more than reading just words
about showers or summer
or hockey or birds.
It’s grimaces, eye flicks
a grin or a frown.
It’s where you are looking
upward or down.
It’s words clearly spoken
precisely intoned
to embellish the writing
you’ve carefully honed.
It’s mystery rhythms
that beat soft to loud
you’re part of the story
enchanting the crowd.
It’s significant pause
of emotional choke,
the punchline delivery
of a well-told joke.
Then hand over the mic
to the next girl or guy
while audience claps,
sighs a satisfied sigh.
© 2016 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)
To see the poem, above, together with some of our poets in action, check out the original post on our society blog HERE.
(By the way, if you slip on over, you won’t see me. I did read, but you’ll have to take my word for it as there are no pixels to prove it.)
This poem is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted today by the Haiku Stickies Queen herself, Diane Mayr at Random Noodling.
