Contemporary British Poetry Performance in Context

Beschreibung

This open access volume addresses the vital role of the live event in British spoken word poetry of the past fifty years. It starts from the premise that meaning in poetry performance is radically conditioned by the performance’s spatio-temporal situatedness and its specific forms of mediation: meaning emerges at the interface of text, voice action, body communication, the poet’s projected stage identity, and is shaped by the unique and emergent dynamic between the poet-performer, audience, technology, and performance context. Through performance analyses that are informed by archival work and original interviews with practitioners, the book sheds new light on the dynamic and varied relationships between tradition, innovation, and mediation in British spoken word poetry. It attends to the performance work of canonical, emergent, and re-discovered figures from a range of stylistic, geographical, ethnic and socio-political constituents within the UK, exploring both avant-garde and popular forms of performed poetries. By carefully relating individual performances to their specific event contexts, the volume sounds out the varied ways in which poets have creatively engaged with both literary and performance traditions as well as with media technologies. In the process, it addresses a number of key developments in UK poetry performance and underscores the transnational dimensions of “British” spoken word. In its entirety, the volume thus makes a pivotal contribution to the history of British poetry performance whilst also developing a critical lens through which to approach the poetry event. 'Poetry Off the Page' is a five-year research project directed by Julia Lajta-Novak at the University of Vienna, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the European Research Council (ERC). Contributors to this volume include current and former members of the 'Poetry Off the Page' team – Shefali Banerji, Marie Krebs, Claire Palzer, Martina Pfeiler, Shalini Sengupta, Helen Thomas, and Emily Timms – with additional chapters by Peter Middleton and Tapasya Narang.   .

This open access volume addresses the vital role of the live event in British spoken word poetry of the past fifty years. It starts from the premise that meaning in poetry performance is radically conditioned by the performance’s spatio-temporal situatedness and its specific forms of mediation: meaning emerges at the interface of text, voice action, body communication, the poet’s projected stage identity, and is shaped by the unique and emergent dynamic between the poet-performer, audience, technology, and performance context. Through performance analyses that are informed by archival work and original interviews with practitioners, the book sheds new light on the dynamic and varied relationships between tradition, innovation, and mediation in British spoken word poetry. It attends to the performance work of canonical, emergent, and re-discovered figures from a range of stylistic, geographical, ethnic and socio-political constituents within the UK, exploring both avant-garde and popular forms of performed poetries.

By carefully relating individual performances to their specific event contexts, the volume sounds out the varied ways in which poets have creatively engaged with both literary and performance traditions as well as with media technologies. In the process, it addresses a number of key developments in UK poetry performance and underscores the transnational dimensions of “British” spoken word. In its entirety, the volume thus makes a pivotal contribution to the history of British poetry performance whilst also developing a critical lens through which to approach the poetry event.

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Julia Novak

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Open Access British Poetry Irish Poetry Poetry Performance Spoken Word Poetry Performance Analysis Literary History Live Event Modern and Contemporary Poetry

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