Orality In Poetry

The development of a focussed interest in the oral performative aspect of poetry is a recent phenomenon, noticeable particularly in funding initiatives such as the British Arts and Humanities Research Council’s “Beyond Text” program which supports among others, a research project on “British Poetry in Performance, 1960-2008”. However an academician or theoretician studying poetry in performance, or the oral aspect of poetry is studying a subject whose history is mostly undocumented. For many poets in the latter half of the twentieth century, performance was a crucial aspect in their art.
The early 1950s saw reading tours by Dylan Thomas through the United States which increased the popularity of poetry readings at a time when Charles Olson

Accepting the artistic merit of performance poetry – its unique aesthetic as a demonstration of poetic art – will point towards an approach that looks at live poetry in terms of form and aesthetic of performance, while negating its artistry suggests an approach that only looks at live poetry in terms of its sociological significance. Further in this chapter I have examined the orality/literacy debate in terms of how it is applicable to performative poetry and the value judgements it evokes, which will affect how sub- genres of live poetry such as performance poetry are evaluated.
In the introduction to The Poet as Performer, Don Cusic notes that “in the end, the poet will be judged by his poetry and not by his performances” (8). In his view, the live performance of poetry apparently has little to do with ‘poetry itelf,’ which is evidently imagined as writing. His idea is that the written poem will outlast the performance. In his words the written word will endure “in the end” when the poet is no more and the oral performance = which for Cusic is something other than poetry – has evaporated like hot