On The Writing Experiment website you will find two examples of such
performances by Taylor Mali and Scott Woods. They are both known as
slam poets, because of their participation in Poetry Slam competitions.
In a Poetry Slam the judges—who are audience members chosen at
random—score poets in performance. The poet with the highest score
wins: excellent presentation skills and the ability to communicate well
with the audience are paramount. Mali and Woods probably would not
identify with experimental poetry movements such as Language Poetry,
and their formal and linguistic preoccupations. Rather they experiment
with the dimension of performance—the voice, projection and the rela-
tionship with the audience—to exciting effect.
Taylor Mali is an American poet whose performances often contain
musical and theatrical elements. Mali’s Undivided Attention (republished)
on The Writing Experiment website is less obviously performance-
orientated than some of his poems, which contain more pronounced
musical and theatrical elements. But I have included it here because of the
subtlety and elegance of the delivery, and to show how a poem can be
effectively heightened in performance, even when it already seems rela-
tively complete on the page. The poem mixes poetic and ‘talking’ language,
and the delivery is both direct and subtle. Mali sometimes breaks the poem
into short phrases, but at other times scoops up a few phrases together into
a longer breath. He also slightly speeds up and slows down his delivery,
and lowers and/or raises the dynamic level of his voice. The result impacts
very effectively on the meaning. For example, the line ‘Who can teach
when there are such lessons to be learnt?’ is given particular emphasis by a
slightly slower pace and softer voice, particularly on the word ‘such’. Simi-
larly, the repetition of ‘the edge of the seat, the edge of tears, the edge of
eight stories up going over’ is emphasised by a slight accelerando, raising
of the voice and accentuation. All these effects help to emphasise the ques-
tions raised in the poem about education and the forms it can take. It is
also interesting to note that Mali does not perform the poem exactly as it
appears on his website in the written version. Rather he makes a number
of cuts and changes, possibly suggesting that there is an improvisational
element in his performances. He seems to use the performance situation
to render the poem slightly differently each time, not only in terms of
delivery but of actual words.
African-American poet Scott Woods’s Elevator Dreams (republished) is
extremely ebullient and feisty. The use of repetition in the piece is most
effective, and this is enhanced by the highly rhythmic, jazz-like delivery of
the poem. Again Woods uses speed, dynamics and pitch. Most of the
poem is delivered in a fast, punchy and loud manner, making it partic-
ularly effective when Woods lowers his voice on the word ‘safe’ near the
216 The Writing Experiment