Out of Words’ and she performed a very rhythmic poem consisting
entirely of clichéd similes while she worked out on a treadmill. After
each short bout of the similes she would pause and one phrase from
a longer linking sentence (also full of clichés) would be projected on a
slide. The clichés and the breathlessness of working out, though seem-
ingly disconnected, were brought together in this context by the title.
But the text and treadmill were also physically linked by Anna’s
rhythm as she strode on the treadmill and the rhythmic propulsion of
the text.- Combine music and sound. Some of these possibilities have already
been explored in the section on sonic poetry, sonic writing. But you
might also work with a musician in such a way that you both respond
to each other. For example, the musician might find musical equiva-
lents to some of your verbal ideas. Or you might adopt musical
structures created by the musician to organise your text. Working inter-
actively with a musician may produce the most unusual and exciting
results if the relationship between the sound and the words is not
‘fixed’ but allows for mutual interactiveness. One of the ways in which
you can increase this is through an element of improvisation.
THE IMPROVISOR,TALK-POET, STAND-UP
STRATEGIST
One of the many exciting possibilities which performance provides is
improvisation (see Exercise 3). I am not concerned here with the huge and
fertile field of theatrical improvisation, but more with the specific capac-
ity to generate verbal texts. Improvising means literally writing in
performance. It involves generating text within the time-frame of the per-
formance, in front of an audience, and without revision: this is ‘pure
improvisation’. Improvisation can also take place in private if revision is
minimised: this is ‘applied improvisation’ (Smith & Dean 1997).
Improvisation is a technique which has been current in all the arts in
the last 50 years, but is particularly prominent in both music and theatre.
Improvising writers are more difficult to find, but Jack Kerouac, for
example, used to write novels continuously and without revision. Ameri-
can ‘talk’ poet, David Antin, on the other hand, improvises in
performance. His improvisations proceed through narrative, anecdotes,
philosophical musing, association of ideas, and recurrent metaphors.
Highly articulate, he is the intellectual equivalent of the stand-up comic.
His work exists in written transcriptions (Antin 1976; 1984) and record-
ings of some of his talks are also available on his homepage at the
224 The Writing Experiment