Poetry readings take place at weddings, funerals, poetry clubs and concerts.
There are a few different rules for poetry reading than for prose reading and these rules help us to keep the shape of the poem.
First you have to be heard. The sound has to get out of your mouth and for this to happen you have to open your mouth.
As part of my MFA program, I was told I had to take a class outside of my comfort zone, which happens to be in fiction. I signed up for a poetry class not expecting to like it. And while I don’t consider myself a poet, delving into poetry changed my writing and my thinking about writing in unexpected ways.
1. Poetry forces the fiction writer to get to the point. Fiction editors often say writing should be “tight”: writing poetry is the ultimate and perhaps most extreme way of learning to employ efficient syntax. Less talk, more meaning. Nowhere does this become more evident than in editing poems. Excess words are stripped and discarded. And while fiction writers are known to moan about the horrors of -ly, poets often eschew -ly, -ing, -ness, -tion and many other suffixes. Every letter, every morpheme, every word, every punctuation mark is either necessary, or it’s gone. Good fiction can also be like that.
I was looking for a poetry group near my home in 2003 and didn’t find one. I contacted my local library and they said that a few years ago someone had tried to get a poetry group going but it only drew 2-3 people and it fizzled out rather quickly. They also told me that if I wanted to give it a try, they would sponsor a group again. So I picked a date and time that worked for me, (the first Thursday of each month from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.) and Poetic License Writer’s Group was born! The library gave us a meeting room at no charge, and advertised the group in their quarterly newsletter and the local weekly newspaper’s calendar section. I created a flyer to post in coffee shops and bookstores, and the group started off with 10 interested people, although usually each meeting had 5-7 attendees. This is the perfect size.
The object of a poetry group is for like-minded people to get together once a month (or as often as the group agrees) and aid one another in learning about poetry, critiquing poetry, working on poetry reading skills, and sharing resources such as websites, books, magazines, and other poetry-related material. To find participants, you can first look within your circle of friends. If you share a love of literature then sharing poetry will be a small leap. If you can find no interest among your friends then you can put up small posters in your local library or bookstore (with permission) advertising your desire to start up a poetry group. I would recommend limiting the numbers in your group to no more then six people to start. Intimate groups work best because there are less distractions and more time can be devoted to each individual’s poetry.
