Tips on Public Readings

Tips on Public Reading: Adapted from: Martyn Crucefix [2002] Ten Steps to Giving a Reading. The Poetry Society. http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/publications/poetrynews/pn2002/readings/ (retrieved December 2009).

1. Warm-up – Some kind of vocal warm-up is needed. Try humming, vocalized vowel sounds, then consonants, chewing toffees, slapping your own cheeks. Ensure you are well-watered before going on; if you are dehydrated while you perform, your concentration will be poor and your throat will dry up.

2. Prepare and organize – Ensure you know what you are going to read and in what order and have a clear idea of how you intend to introduce each piece. Have the texts you are going to read at hand – marked in a book, or in a prepared sequence of loose sheets. Adhere to the time you are allotted to read. If possible have a friend in the audience who you can make eye contact with give you a sign when your time is drawing to a close.

3. Your program – Philip Larkin reputedly said something like, “make them laugh, make them cry, then bring on the dancing girls!”. Variety and some sort of attention to overall dynamic of the reading – whether it’s ten minutes or one hour – is important. Accessibility and humour are great to open with. Once you’ve got an audience with you and relaxed, then you can get more serious if you want, then you can make more demands on them, but you’ve got to win their confidence first. You need to know how long your reading is going to last. That means rehearsing.

4. The Walk-on – Walk on as if you own the stage, rather than as if you are dodging sniper fire. Slow and confident. Don’t start flicking through papers or beginning to talk before you have come to a stop and turned to the audience. You will be nervous, but you don’t have to spell it out to them. We must try to make the audience relaxed – not questioning or even sympathizing with your nervousness.

5. Eye contact – As you come to a stop on stage, look at the audience for longer than you think you can afford. Smiling is a good idea. Make them feel OK about you being up there. On-stage time is bafflingly much faster than audience time. Normal speed for the performer looks hurried and nervous to the audience.

6. Introduction, general – Something needs to be said before the words begin to flow. It doesn’t matter what because none of the audience will remember it. But they need a moment or two to tune in to you from whatever has preceded you. If you can blather effectively, then blather. If you can’t, then have something ready that will give the impression of blathering. “Thank you for asking me to read I hope you can hear me at the back this is my first time in Camelot, it’s lovely to see so few people here tonight I met a man on the way here and he was a dog.”

7. Introductions, specific – to specific passages. Some need none. But as Lear said (King not Edward) we should not always have to “reason” the need. Introductions serve to give audiences space and breathing time and not only for clarification. That said, clarification is mostly what poets try to do when they introduce their work. There is a need for this often as live audiences hear a poem only once; they cannot return to it, or re-read lines they have failed to grasp. But there’s a danger of over-explication.

8. No hurry – Don’t hurry anything. But especially, don’t rush from the end of one passage to the opening blurb of the next. Poems, for example, aren’t like TV advertisements. They need a moment or two – or three or four – of rest to let them sink in. People may well be deeply moved by what you have just read. Don’t under-sell your own work.

9. The interims – in a longer reading, an audience will need breaks. Interim chat gives a free space for that to happen. Some will follow what you have to say; others will welcome the time to switch off, allowing them to come back fresh to your next piece. Like the general introduction, it doesn’t matter what it is you say, though by this time you will have a good proportion of your audience listening carefully so it ought to be something that will interest them. Jokes are good. If they are even remotely related to what you have read/will read, so much the better. If you are not good at telling jokes, learn some. Script your off-hand spontaneity.

10. Don’t change horses midway – It does seem good advice not to revise plans mid-way through a reading. There is often a temptation to do this. But the risk is obvious – hunting for unprepared pieces, improvised introductions and so on. If you have planned and shaped a reading, I’d stick with it, barring disasters and acts of God.

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