poetry aidiences are low because poetry has a bad ...

2008-03-07T15:06:00.000+05:30

poetry aidiences are low because poetry has a bad name. and most practioners hold forth as if they are something special. drop the persona.put some blood and shoulder into the words. connect. it will help if a cricket star or bollywood hero makes an appearance at the readings. you need a poetry ambassador!

cp

Let me confess, I would not have turned up here ha...

2008-03-07T13:26:00.000+05:30

Let me confess, I would not have turned up here had it not been for Petey's gentle urging. Let me also confess, with truly no offence to the people I know here, that poetry has never done much for me. Let me suggest that those two confessions are not unrelated to each other, and to the discussion you people are trying to have, the questions you are trying to answer.

Put another way: how do you reach out to someone like me, how do you make poetry meaningful to someone like me? (Clearly Pete's not going to be around all the time to do his gentle urging).

The only way, it seems to me, is for the poet to do what every other kind of writer tries to do: give her readers something to think about. Priya says that poets are "practical people", "embedded in reality". Well, then there must be some way of communicating that practicality and reality. You can't write in the hope that people read what you write, or come listen to you. Instead, you must write with the constant aim of drawing people to what you write. To me, that's the practicality and reality that Priya refers to: i.e. not hope, but reality.

Whether that drives the subjects you choose, or the way you treat those subjects, is immaterial. It should be the aim, that's all. And if you do that, they will eventually come: whether 6pm or 830 or weekday or weekend.

This is hardly stuff that people here need to be hearing from me, of course. But I find it good to remind myself of it every now and then. We all write for ourselves, true. But we all also want to be read. Thus every writer, every poet, has got to keep asking himself: How do I write so I get read?

It's almost a job description, as far as I'm concerned.

Comments on caferati: Poetry audiences - a discussion [Part 6]

poetry aidiences are low because poetry has a bad ...

Let me confess, I would not have turned up here ha...