Which Poem am I Reading?

Abstract

Despite the traditional belief, endorsed by T.S. Eliot, that the printed poem should represent merely the equivalent of a musical score for its actualization in oral performance, the creative procedures of writing, performing and interpreting poetry are actually subtly interrelated. The voice, the persona of the poem, is encoded in its printed form; but in its release or realization in oral performance, it begins to resonate both with the intended idiom of its creator and with the conditioned, interpretive expectations of the audience. The poet-performer releases his poetry from the tyranny of the printed page. The author is a performing poet who illustrates his argument with examples from his own writing in which he seeks to recreate the voices of, among others, Paul St. Vincent, a young, black South Londoner; Sally Goodman, the white, English feminist; and Philpot the middle-aged, black cricket fan.