As well as the poetry course at Swanwick, I was also asked to lead the two showcase events. These were essentially poetry readarounds – a rather more restrained atmosphere than a normal open mike, but along those lines.
There were other showcase sessions on at the same time, in fiction and non-fiction, but we had a good turn out and it looked as if there would be far more people reading than there was time for.
In the end, this wasn’t such a big problem as I’d feared, as some had come specifically to listen. I was delighted: usually people are so focused on the sound of their own voices that they read and leave immediately, or they arrive late and shuffle their papers until it’s their turn. I’ve said before that if we talked about “poetry listenings” rather than “poetry readings” there might be a change in attitude.
There was a wide variety of poetry read (also sung and performed), and the readers ranged from first timers to experienced open mikers. After the second showcase, one of the ‘listeners’ said he’d enjoyed the session so much he was interested in reading more poetry and asked me to recommend a book to start him off.
Not only did he come simply to listen, but he went away wanting to read more. I don’t think that happens often, and it’s definitely worth recording here.
For what it’s worth, these are the books I suggested:
52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, Ruth Padel: The author explores 52 modern English language poems, looking at how they work in terms of sound, sense, metre, allusion…
101 Sonnets, edited by Don Paterson: includes a wonderful essay on the sonnet form, as well as 101 sonnets spanning the centuries and a brief paragraph on each.
The Rattle Bag, edited by Ted Hughes & Seamus Heaney: an anthology of English Language poetry across the ages and the continents. Not a personal favourite, but a useful overview of poetry in English and likely to contain something for everyone.
don't confuse the narrator 