There is something almost self-defeating about a poetry reading. Is it poetry if you don’t know where the line ends?

Verse effectively abandoned the oral tradition with Modernism, around the same time it threw out regular rhyme and metre. Since Eliot, Pound, Williams, cummings, etc, the poem has been as much a visual experience as an aural one; as much about mise-en-page as iambs and anapaests.

Yet if poetry is ever to be a communal, rather than merely a private, activity, it needs to be read out loud. That is why events such as the London Poetry Festival, which ran between 7th and 10th of August in Waterloo, must exist.

That’s not to say there aren’t issues defining what constitutes poetry in performance. The reading that kicked off the final night was a piece by resident poet Bryan Oliver about a man nursing his partner as both look back on their destructive relationship. It was well characterised (like a less bawdy, more rueful Alan Bennett), but suspiciously theatrical.

Poetry is more than just verse (if you are Jacques Derrida, poetry is a hedgehog), but doesn’t dramatic dialogue have enough forums of its own?

Most of the offerings were more recognisable as verse, often paying respect to conventional forms. There were a few sonnets, while Richard Deakin’s Odin-inspired offering, ‘Viking’s Safety Manual’, even tipped its horned hat to the medieval alliterative tradition.

More established poets such as Michael Horovitz and Sarah Wardle (who was nominated for the Forward Best First Collection prize in 2003) were presumably on the bill to provide a popular draw, but such events are more about up-and-coming talent, such as another of the event’s resident writers, Christian Ward. Some of his work can be found at tigermoth99.deviantart.com.

Perhaps the best poem of the evening was also by the youngest poet, Aiko Harman, a 24-year-old Los Angeles-native currently studying for a Master’s degree in Edinburgh. In it, the poetic voice recalls memories of a since-defunct Californian airshow, combining great linguistic and rhythmic flair with outstanding imagery. Regrettably, at the time of writing, the poem does not appear alongside her other work (which includes several pieces that draw evocatively on her Japanese-American heritage) on her blog, www.aikowrites.blogspot.com.

Her star will rise, if there is poetic justice.
 

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Michael Barnett

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1 Comment for The London Poetry Festival

Jwahir

I would love to be a part of the Poetry Festival in 2011….I am a writer, living in Austin,Tx….Born in Brooklyn, N.Y…You know I got a lot to say….

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