Poetry, performance and communication

Back in the 1980s, when I was a host and performer on the poetry stage at Greenbelt Festival, communication wasn't quite as sophisticated as it is today. More of that in a moment. But first, read on.... 

The 1980s were a fertile time for poetry, but you could only really meet on a face-to-face basis, and so we would all travel to the festival around August bank holiday each year, keep our fingers crossed that the weather wouldn't ruin our fun, and spend four days performing our poetry to crowds sometimes in excess of a thousand people, over on the Greenbelt Fringe. We could ease a poem or three in between the bands while they set up. Yes, it was fast, frantic and furious stuff, and we learnt to adapt to just about any situation. 

This was performance poetry of course, and it was hard work, and a lot of fun. I believe that performance poetry and those live mic sessions shaped me into the writer and poet I am today.

I was even invited to read my poetry to more than 24,000 people from the main stage on one occasion. I was more nervous of the two guys who were standing in the wings of the main stage that day than I was of the huge crowd I was standing in front of. The main stage comperes were Liverpool poet Stewart Henderson and music journalist and poet Steve Turner. I subsequently got to work with Steve Turner, appearing alongside him once or twice on the tour circuit. But at the time, what meant more to me when I exited the stage (left) was not the applause from the audience, but the slap on the back and the 'well dones' from the two poets. That meant the absolute world to me as a young poet.

I mentioned communication during the 1980s. It's great today with e-mail, Facebook and all the other social media platforms, because poets and other creatives can share their work to a large audience and receive feedback almost instantly. It's wonderful to belong to a few poetry collective and communities, because everyone seems to know what you're going through when you are in a fallow period of 'writer's block' or you're going through a particularly traumatic time. Most poets are wounded healers. We use writing as catharsis to work through our own problems, but also perhaps to inspire others to do the same. Today it's miraculous to receive critical acclaim and evaluation from one's peers within the hour of posting a new piece.

Back in the 1980s it was more difficult. We needed to share our snail mail addresses. We would send printed sheets of our poetry to each other through the post, and hopefully, a week or two later we might receive a few comments back from someone, along with one or two of their poems to read in return, It was quaint, and it worked, but it had nothing of the power we have at our disposal in today's digital world.