I find it hard to believe that some poetry sessions are held in those bastions of international, soul-dead capitalism, the booze-free chain cafes, such as Cafe Nero and Costa. I'd rather stick needles in my eyes!

As for public libraries, with their Death Breath atmosphere of State-sponsored do-goodery - aaaarrrggh! Get me outta there!

There are some poetry groups on Wirral which meet in libraries and at least one in a bookshop. Dear me, how bourgeois and Pooterish they are. They tell would-be performers they must on no account use swear words such as "blimmin hell" and "flippin nora" - pathetic!

The pub, the rumbustious British pub with its tradition of free speech and passion is the genuine home of performance poetry - and poets should be rallying to the aid pubs in this the hour of their need.

The group I run, the Bards of New Brighton, has always met in a pub. And I note that the Tudor House, Wigan, offers a similar bohemian, exuberant atmosphere.

Raise your glasses,
Lads and Lasses,
To Poetry in Pubs!

'ere 'ere ! There's no law uz sez yer've got fert sup ale just coz yer in a pub.

The poetry event that I run, Inn Verse, is held monthly, as its name suggests, in a pub. It's great to perform with alcohol flowing and a general atmosphere of bonhomie occasionally being interrupted by abusive drunken regulars, however...

...I am assuming from your comments, Steve, that you have never attended a performance poetry event at Manchester Central Library? Maybe we do things differently in Manchester but the Committee Room at MCL has witnessed some of the most scabrous, extravagant and downright disgusting performance poetry (and poets) that exist on the scene. I know for a fact that several contributors to this site have performed at/attended events in this space and will possibly back me up in its claim as a worthwhile, non-alcoholic (although wine is sometimes provided for free! How many pubs do that?) performance poetry centre of excellence.

SUPPORT LIBRARIES.....they are not after your money, like coffee shops, cafes, and...yes...pubs.

Oh, hey, scabrous is good. Gotta come and 'ave a bit of that. Maybe it's just the Wirral libraries and coffee houses that are unpoetic. In the posher areas of Wirral, folk do tend to have rather beige personalities.

Pub's are generally best. MCL committee room is the exception rather than the rule (I've even performed St Thomas's Bells there, and that poem really is a scum-stricken stream of cleverly engineered, recalcitrant filth).

Once you get out of Manchester and into the provinces, library gigs are nasty: what with your readers' digest/people's friend "poets" and their trochaically bouncy "humorous" rhyming couplets or their now defunct Lancashire dialect to the prosody of Albert and the Lion, even for "serious" issues-gargling poems that are more like Albert and the freaking hippotamus that wallows in the stinking mud of human misery that you can't actually do anything constructive about sort of poems. And then there's their supportive atmosphere with the all gather round in a circle like stroke victims having occupational therapy and clapping as one of them expresses him/herself in the only way he/she can by drooling out of the paralysed corner of their mouth.

Discuss.

I probably prefer to perform pissed which probably says much about my art. Having said that you can get a good show going in a café and the poetry world would be poorer without libraries.

We have an event from time to time in a theatre in Wirral and that is good. Apparently I may have outraged some of the more sheltered members of that group, but they didn't chuck me out.

Pubs are good, but not the only suitable location for performing poetry.

- DG, Know what you mean about readers' digest/people's friend "poets". My top dislike is whimsical rhyming poems full of middle class "humour". They're not poems, and they're not funny! The rest of your comment is so very cruel, DG, but I like it!

- Malcolm (Malpoet), I remember your feeelthy poetry performance at the Carlton Theatre, Birkenhead. I liked it - but there was a lot of gurning in disapproval by outraged Am Dram harridans in the audience. Now that WAS funny!

Hey up Steve you can be such a Dick at times ...

Whimsical rhyming poems... full of middle class "humour". is your chief Hate...They are not poets????.....

John Betcheman was a rhyming, whimsical, and very funny, and so fucking middle class that even the People Friend put him on page 3...And talkin of tits... when did 'class' become a poetic ability issue??

Wigan certainly has left a scar...

...and is there still honey for tea...
?

Regards
Whimsical middle class poet


Gus

I'll consider myself told off then, Gus.

Actually, when I were a lad, growing up in Wiggin, we were so poor, we had no shoes to eat.

Then I moved down south and discovered how the middle classes live ... they had fruit on the table when nobody was ill!

I love Betjamin, as it goes. His 'Slough' poem, for instance, is not twee at all; it's a searing indictment of the ugliness of materialism and modernism, and that's a great subject for any poet to tackle.

And Betjamin's 'A Subaltern's Love Song' is a sublime young man's love poem.

Both are much better than the drivel that gets read in libraries and coffee shops.

Oh my goodness! You two behave ; )

I would imagine that the 'Slough' poem was a searing indictment of the ugliness of materialism and 'modernity', not 'modernism'. Modernism being an artistic movement and modernity being the experience of living in a modern society.

All replies to this post should be addressed to:

62 Stickler Street,
Pedant's Corner,
Lower Up-My-Own-Arse,
Knobshire

Flippin' 'eck Siren - we're neighbours!

%

I find myself on both sides of a debate I think. Unusual for me. I like alcohol lubricated, maybe roisterous environments advocated by Steve and it tends to be more suited to the kind of earthy approach to things which I have.

Those who want to restrict themselves to that should surely be entitled to do so, but I would not go so far as to say that the more sober groups are inappropriate for performance poetry. I don't set out to offend, but there are a lot of challenging things in my poetry. Whether it is my attitude to religion, reference to the more delicate parts of human anatomy, my rather extreme politics or my use of language it would be surprising if some people were not put on edge at times by what I say.

My experience is that most people accept this even if they are uncomfortable with the material. Actually the most obviously offended reaction I have received has not been from female members of an audience and it was in a pub.

Where a venue sets rules (such as no swearing) I comply with those rules and it is their right to decide the sort of work they want to hear; just as it is my decision whether I want to perform at their venue.

Rude but unharried poet.

Blip

Pubs are great places to read if you're male & aggressive & think it's your duty to foister your crap rhymes on a bunch of inebriated pissheads who wouldn't know poetry if it came up & bit them on the arse.

Discuss.

I'm a good listener. Do go on.

My poetry is very discriminating in where it bites.

Your poetry is heat seeking, Malpoet: each stanza sentient and toothed. When you edit you leave the cuts under your pillow and the Tooth Fairy pays you a fiver a throw. That is the truth.

The real reason pubs may be better venues for performance poetry is because the regulars provide a captive audience. Also, the rooms are usually small enough to create the illusion that there are more people present than is actually the case. Let's face it, very few people put on their best togs of an evening, turn to their partners and say 'Shall we go and see some performance poetry tonight, dear?' It just isn't that popular, and when it is, it is usually because it has segued into another artform like comedy or cabaret.
Performance poetry is an incestuous circuit of people performing to each other, dragging unfortunate spouses, partners and best mates along to mask the fact that nobody really wants to hear this stuff. But because poetry is the easiest art form to pick up quickly (we don't walk around playing guitars or painting from birth but we talk incessantly) there are enough people to perform to each other and create the illusion of an audience. Try a straw poll at the next night you go to, whether it be at pub, library or cafe, which is dedicated only to performance poetry. Ask how many people have come who are not poets and do not know one of the poets performing. How many positive answers do you think you'll get to that question?

Performance poetry open mic nights are just collections of people sitting around waiting for their turn. Any 'civilians' who appear to enjoy performance poetry are usually struck more by the comedy or 'performance' (usually embarassingly strenuous acting) than the actual poetry. We're living a lie, people. Living a lie.

To be serious for a minute:

(you mean I wasn't before?)

A pub can be a good place to read your poetry, if you feel safe there and the atmosphere is friendly and convivial. But it's not for everybody; some people are just too shy and sensitive to read in that kind of atmosphere. And it's nonsense to blame people for being "too bourgeous" or whatever for going to libraries and bookshops. Not everybody is, or wants to be, an in-yer-face performer.

I think it can be a threatening atmosphere for women sometimes. Not all women, obviously, but how many performance evenings in pubs have a bill that's any where near 50% women? Usually, it's about 90% male, unless it's been pre-booked.

I find slams in particular to be nothing but bear pits for agressive stances: lots of shouting but not much light.

And before I get any comments about me 'pissing on performance poetry on a performance poetry website' or whatnot, consider this: I run one of the most consistently successful poetry open mic nights in Manchester and have done for nearly two years. I know the local scene very well. I enjoy poetry performance but I probably wouldn't if I didn't do it myself. I enjoy performing myself and if the other people around are entertaining I count that a good night. I just have few illusions about why people are there.

Good comment Steve W. I had trouble attracting female students to Inn Verse at first. It's better now but we're still talking a an 80/20 split. Freedup, down the road, has a dedicated space and their proportion of women is much higher.

Siren Lad,
I can't agree with ye about this ...
"Performance poetry open mic nights are just collections of people sitting around waiting for their turn. Any 'civilians' who appear to enjoy performance poetry are usually struck more by the comedy or 'performance' (usually embarassingly strenuous acting) than the actual poetry."

No, no, no. At its best, performance poetry is life-enhancing, warm, passionate, funny, senstive and profound - sometimes all those things in one poem. I've witnessed people getting a great buzz from listening / watching a performer, and from performing their own stuff, often after developing confidence and hidden talents after watching others.

It's just great, positive, a blessing. Just think how poorer the world would be if we didn't have performance poets such as the brilliant Pete Crompton, for instance..

And as for whoever commented that pubs make women feel uncomfortable, how patronising! I mean, come ON! It is up to us to make pub poetry venues welcoming to everybody and great to be at. I'm proud enough to claim that the pub-based group I run, the Bards in New Brighton, is welcoming and great to be at. And so is the Tudor in Wigan. Next meeting of the Bards, by the way, is Easter Monday,13 April, from 8pm, at the wonderful Magazine pub, New Brighton.

Eeeeh, there must be a lot of corrosive cynicism around in Manchester these days.

*

Corrosive cynicism -in Manchester ? No flamin wonder, it's all down to this acid rain that wanders slowly in great clouds.

I go to pubs for the same reason I go to poetry gigs; for the social intercourse.
One of my favourite pubs has a reputation for being rough, (undeservedly) yet it is used by people from very diverse social backgrounds; and it is this same pub which got me interested in expressing myself through poetry from some old discarded books, which we would read out loud in a spare room, and then through writing and performing my own work.

I think the world of poetry is a richer place for the mix of personalities to be found in such places; do we want poetry that is written for, and performed by, only 'nice', so-called 'respectable' people, or do we want a vibrant creative atmosphere. For too long the world of literature and the other arts has been dominated by a self-serving elitist clique.
Come the revolution ! Oh my it's here.

.

Siren posted:

"Ask how many people have come who are not poets and do not know one of the poets performing. How many positive answers do you think you'll get to that question?"


225 people at Bristol Poetry festival (audience)
all came for poetry, and especially liked the performance poetry.
Some asked for written versions after the show, as they wanted to take it home. This worked as some of the performance poems worked just as well on page.

Looks like it depends where you go.I agree 225 is not the norm, sometimes its 5.
In poetry there are many variants on the form, pub nights are for a night out, that usually calls for entertainment. Better not let them down then.

Doing a charity gig>? In a pub? maybe read something quiet, laugh it up later with some more out of the zone stuff.

We are living a lie Siren when we delude ourselves but once the realisation dawns its liberating, nothing left to loose except perform!
If you make one person happy its worthwhile.
I would say the priority is on enjoyment and living life, meeting, entertaining, letting joyful emotion flow, perhaps mix the sorrow in too, you know all the usual tactics.

Hey performance poetry is a great way to dodge your round at the bar, ask Julian and Paul - re my round buying........................

Bill Posted:

"For too long the world of literature and the other arts has been dominated by a self-serving elitist clique.
Come the revolution ! Oh my it's here."

its living above a sweet shop in Bolton I think. Plotting to overthrow the library clique.

- Bill - aye, aye, keep it rough and real.

- Moxy, as a genuine supporter of women's and men's liberation, I must advise you that Real Harridans do not need werewolf masks.

- Re. struggling pubs. Closed pub are not merely disused buildings: they are signposts of a failing confidence in western culture; and the defunct pubs are sacred to people's memories.

Whenever I see a boarded-up pub I think of all the expressions of love, anger, passion, tender friendship, rebellion, humour and poetry that have been uttered inside them over the years.

We are losing something really valuable here - and our nasty, proscriptive Labour Government and its Liberal Fascist allies in the Health Service have deepened that loss by introducing the hated smoking ban in pubs. The smoking ban isn't a health issue; it's a FREEDOM issue - much more important. It's not much use being healthy if you are not free.

What will the health nazis ban next in pubs - drinking beer, telling dirty jokes, radical poetry that mocks Government initiatives? Well, they are already mobilising forces to stop people drinking...

Whenever I see a boarded up pub I think 'lock in'

Steve Reegan says

"The pub, the rumbustious British pub with its tradition of free speech and passion is the genuine home of performance poetry - and poets should be rallying to the aid pubs in this the hour of their need."


Here here Steve!

Moxy, have you any galvanised, round head nails and a clout hammer, 12 sheets of 3/4 marine ply and a strong right arm?

I want to be boarded up

Moxy, 'lock out' more like, as the State no longer trusts people to gather and converse where they can't be filmed on CCTV.

Or maybe 'lock down' - as there is a definite air of civil repression in what is happening now.

Any road, I'm off out now... dahn the pub with me lovely harridan.

Viva New Brighton - home of the brash, outlandish and FREE!

I love you all!

I can assure you that, having been barred from 2 pubs, free speech is certainly not alive and well in all pubs. My locals are filled with drunks on rumour mills.

And Pete, I've an amount of galvinised ironmongery at your disposal. However I prefer to use papier mache. Slower, I know, but a much better and more robust end product.

Busy Clippers Steve

Best not have poetry gigs at our local university;
anybody not turning up three times in a row might end up getting extremely extraordinarily renditionned as a terrorist !

Performance art. Moxy boarding up Pete. Make sure you charge admission. I want a private box and will pay the market rate.

"At its best, performance poetry is life-enhancing, warm, passionate, funny, senstive and profound - sometimes all those things in one poem."

And at its worst (which is 90% of the time) it's self-indulgent rhyming twaddle from a macho posturing dork.

10% will do!
quality!

worth waiting for.
Steve why do you go back to these events?

Nostalgia.

Memories of seeing John Cooper Clarke & Linton Kwesi Johnson & Henry Normal.

Also, I get invited and it's impolite not to accept some of the time.

And actually, the only events I've been to recently have been either The Other Room (wildly innovative poetry) or ones with invited guests that I like.

Steve Waling said:

"And at its worst (which is 90% of the time) it's self-indulgent rhyming twaddle from a macho posturing dork"

fairy nuff, but how about Library/cafe events at their worst?

Can I borrow your instrument Steve? The one that measures twaddle. The twaddometer, as a techie I wish to check the calibration.
No charges. It may have drifted a touch, expansion and contraction and all.

Now then....lets see....this 'Macho' M'larcky , hmmmm degrading to men me thinks! I have witnessed plenty of femacho performances, good and bad. The more agressive femachos ended up sounding like men, however some men sounded a bit girly which was nice too. Not so sure gender has a bearing on judgement. Macho and its connotations, or femacho is part of being human and fuels writing (if harnessed and expressed in such ways as to not be overly aggressive, unless intended)

I think it would be more advantageous and less vitriolic for you to suggest ways in which to harness our emotions and writing in order to express them in a way that would be acceptable to a broader audience, hence giving people the ability to go down well outside the pub scene.

I am going to pick out one of my macho poems and re work it (im quite defensive over pub performance poetry) I shall attend a cafe/library event and read it, see if it fits.

I'm not against nice little poetic gatherings, but my cravings for performance poetry spill over, perhaps when and if the passion dies, youll find me converted and in the corner checking that there are no cobwebs, and dusting down appropriately

I have de ja vu Steve, have we been here before.?
I put it to you to smile, get up on stage and give us good rant, get it all out my son.

:-)
c'mon you know you want to.
Show me your war face Steve.

Ar Ey, as they say round here, I performed a set last night (Good Friday) in ...a coffee house!!

It was the Mocha Lounge in Sir Thomas Street, central Liverpool.

Mind you, the place did also serve a limited selction of wine and beer. Shame the only red wine served was a Merlot blend. Merlot always gives me a headache.

The event usually has two or three poets, but singer-songwriters dominate proceedings. I was the only poet there last night, and I must say, for once at a mixed event, I enjoyed the musicians and singers. No whinging, sub-Dido harridans, for once!

The atmosphere was friendly, warm and a bit studenty. It appeared to be run by a singer called Guy. That's all I know. I was taken there by the Wirral poet Ieuan Cilgwri, who chose not to perform, though he tells me he will at our Bards of New Brighton open floor sesh on Easter Monday evening (April 13), at the magnificent Magazine pub, in New Brighton, starting at 8pm,

Not at all sure about your use of the word 'harridan' there, Steve. It's one of those words which is particularly offensive because it has no real male equivalent. What it does refer to, when deconstructed, is a woman's age and her assertiveness, neither of which I see as particularly negative attributes. The only way they could be construed as negative is if one were pandering to patriarchal hegemony, revealing oneself as afeared of emasculation (cultural or socio-sexual) in response to women rising from patriarchal oppression.

Ironic or satiric use of the word should probably only be precipitated by said oppressed groups themselves, in the manner of Niggaz With Attitude, or Virago Press etc.

Simon, sorry, I didn't mean 'harridan'.

I meant 'Harpy'.

Oh, that's all right, then. I hate those bitches.

Haha... ce n'est pas gentil!

I think you're missing the point focusing on the venue. Not all library / cafe / pub settings are the same. It's the job of the organiser to make sure that the ambience of the venue fits the tone of the event and nature of the poets / poetry that is to be performed. Also it depends on the time of day - e.g. any sensible cafe owner would schedule a poetry event at a time when the venue is quiet as an extra money spinner not when the cafe is full of people who want to chat eat and NOT watch poetry. I've attended poetry performances in libraries / pubs and cafes some of which have been brilliant, others utterly crap and it's usually down to poor organisation.
Figure out which sort of poetry 'performance' is to your taste and stick to attending those.

<quote>Show me your war face Steve.</quote>

I don't have a war face. I'm a pacifist.

The problem seems to be to be simple: most performance poetry is basically written mainly to please or otherwise affect an audience. Now that audience may want you to rant, or it may want you to be nice and quiet and gentle.

But a poetry that looks to what it is writing about, and whether it's a true reflection of the world you're writing about, not to whether the audience is going to like, or be annoyed by it, is a rather different (and harder) thing to achieve. It still affects the audience, but it's not trying to effect stock responses (cheers or boos).

If you want to write poetry that goes deep, stop writing for an audience and start writing for the subject. Well, that's the first step at least...

A good point Steve.
I'm ok with that, yes.
Personally I write for both, its just I enjoy performance art more than my page work. This is becuase I just like to get out there and make people laugh or think etc.......the immediate response is satisfying. I agree about page poetry being harder to achieve although this does not mean that there is no skill in performance, there is.

I think its important to be able to do both if you want to be all round sucessfull

It's not really about "performance" or "page", Pete. It's about whether you're writing to the subject, or to the audience.

Steve
Who is the end user the singleton reader/audience or the subject?

What is the objective of communication?

Perhaps the subject of performance poetry is the audience?

Hi Mox
I think it is the audience
Without performance poetry many non poetic people would miss out, its a way of reaching new people.
You can bring them onboard, show them more gentle deeper page writing once you hooked them with some quick fix laughs.

I write from my own experiences, so many enjoy the shows, then go on to read poetry books. They may not have done so had they not been in the pub watching performances.

I think Steves point may be from frustration, and I understand that.
Perhaps those who hone and perfect thier written work become frustrated with poets ranting on as though a cross between stand up comedy and poetic drama, with little skill applied to the written piece.(sometimes)

Some poets I watch ranting or rapping on, its just a quick hit fix and I cant blame anyone who makes a career and who teaches poetry etc- to be a little annoyed at performance poets calling themselves poets, if they have put little effort into the written work.

So I agree with that.
In order to ones personal best I think its important to work hard across the board, be aware of the words on page just as much as the performance itself. THINK PERFORM WRITE, edit, craft re-read, hone, connect (with yourself and emotions), deliver, entertain.......learn, read, watch, accept....

but live!!!! be a people person that is what life is about, get it out there, work on it, take advice, observe...yes still rant! - but dont let that be your all.

I have plenty of work to read at librarys, heck I'm going to go to a few (again)

one thing is common, hard work.
work in = results out.
dont get complacent just because you can shout and wiggle your hips a bit.- wiggle your hips- yes, but make sure those words can withstand the colder light of day

the pub remains important workspace, and I still prefer the environment, I could go far to say that I am motivated to write in order to share the work and so it is part of my socialising, a way of expressing myself and sharing my ideas/loves/frustrations in a less formal environment, an extended form of socialising perhaps?

I have never ever made so many friends and acquaintances since I began reading aloud.

I have been writing from the age of, well from the very earliest age, before I could actually write words. It was the pub performance circuit that accelerated and inspired me to continue and to put effort in. The motivation for me was always to share the work and be loved, took the pub scene to do that. I found it very difficult in libraries, very stuffy (sometimes) and almost too formal, the emphasis seemed to be on the higher brow, my missing glass never reached that far.

Gus - "the end user" is obviously whoever ends up reading you, or seeing you perform, and may ultimately be someone entirely unknown to you 500 years from now, if you're lucky. You can't really anticipate how they will take what you do. Not even Shakespeare wrote for posterity; but neither did he just give the audience what they wanted. Or didn't want - he didn't write to offend anymore than he wrote to ingratiate himself with the audience (mind you, considering who was paying his wages, he probably put in a bit to ingratiate himself with his patrons...)

I'm probably putting it in a way that seems too black & white. It's not that you ignore the audience and make it so obscure that no-one can understand; but that ultimately poetry comes out of your engagement with the world around you, not out of a desire to please. Unless you're just in it to entertain, which is, I guess, Pam Ayres territory. Fine if that's your bag.

I suspect a lot of performance poetry are caught in a cleft stick. They like the adulation of an audience; but they end up dealing in easy emotiveness and cliches because that goes down well in an audience. Page poets, of course, have their own set of audience expectations: for a nice little epiphany in the last verse, for instance.

Great poetry has an element, I think, of "unexpectation." It "surprises with a fine excess" (Keats said that, not me.) It gives you something that you didn't expect, it disturbs your equilibrium. That's what draws me to poetry, not the ever-so-earnest message of the poet's ego. The something else, the can't-quite-put-my-finger-on-it-ness that makes you want to return to it time after time.

You can bring them onboard, show them more gentle deeper page writing once you hooked them with some quick fix laughs.

---

I'm afraid I don't think it works that way. If you feed a child a diet of MacDonald's you create an adult who eats junk food.

Plus it's patronising.

Steve
Thanks for that.
I hear and see clearly where you are coming from, thanks for your reply.
Whilst I cannot or for that matter would not disagree with you I have, during my performances, communicated suffiently to listeners in sofar as they have not only enjoyed the experience but felt a desire to write themselves. Not all my converts have gone on to perform but I think thats due mainly and understandably to nerves.

Once again thank you
Gus

Steve
I loved junk food/fish chips/wimpy etc as a child
I have the healthiest diet around.
Im perfect weight
fit, healthy and often dont look my age
and love al fresco and Mediterranean diet

Just dont agree with you
Patronising, no I dont agree, you have to start somewhere.

christ you sound uptight
fucking hell

There is a lot of poetry around that doesn't appear to have any subject and it's audience is unlikely to be more than the author and his sycophants.

“Not even Shakespeare wrote for posterity; but neither did he just give the audience what they wanted. Or didn't want - he didn't write to offend anymore than he wrote to ingratiate himself with the audience (mind you, considering who was paying his wages, he probably put in a bit to ingratiate himself with his patrons...)”

You have no more idea of what Shakespeare wrote for, Steve, than anybody else does. It is pretty obvious from his handling of the historical material that he was ingratiating himself with the Elizabethan court. Fairly good idea because it was a good way to stay alive as well as to stay in work

Shakespeare apart, writing poetry is not as simple a matter as writing for a subject or an audience. If you intend to perform poetry you must have some regard for your audience. To fail to do so would be incredibly impolite as well as being stupid. That doesn't mean that you 'give the audience what they want' whatever that silly phrase might mean. If you are able to engage and entertain an audience you are placing yourself in a position in which you might be able to convey to them feelings, emotions, ideas, philosophies, etc. that you might not be able to do in other ways. If you have the talent to capture an audience, in the way that many performance poets like Pete Crompton can do, you can take good poetry to people who might never have seen such ideas on the page.

Performing to an audience is a very real piece of engagement in the world around you. It is no more or less profound than any other sort of interaction. The idea that creating obscurity somehow makes a poem more meaningful is just idiotic and the fact that an audience is pleased by a performance doesn't mean that the work performed was presented just to please.

The silliness of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' may only have been produced to bring in the cash by getting a quick laugh. We will never know.

Poets write for many reasons and none of them are right or wrong. A very great work of art may be written out of catharsis in which the poet has no regard for an audience and there may not be a specific subject intelligible to the reader, but the use of language is beautiful or gripping. To take a poem like 'Xanadu' by Coleridge which I love. Coleridge lied about the origin of the poem and it is quite possible that he only wrote to appeal to an audience. It is variable in its style and quality and I cannot see that it was any part of Coleridge engaging in the world around him. It is memorable and enduring and that is enough.

Dismissing entertainers for their emptiness or superficiality is just the snobbery of people who are so much up their own arse that they don't realise they are dismissing the greatest of literature at the same time as they attempt to brush aside those whose talent they may envy.

I eat whatever the hell I want. I couldn't give monkey's whether it is supposed to be good for me or not. I was brought up on insufficient food.

Hmmm-interesting discussion topic! All I can say is that the open mic nights at the Tudor have re-kindled my desire for Poetry.

I already write short scripts,monologues,etc.as part of Scriptshop,but have found that constant exposure to these evenings has caused me to develop a thirst for Poetry,not just the on-stage ,in-yer-face performance end either.

So,although I haven't read out loud within a cafe,Starbucks,or Library setting,I would have to say that if the setting instills a desire to learn,and read more about the actual craft of Poetry,then surely both are viable options,aren't they?

Saw this in a toilet the other day,"If you sprinkle when you tinkle,please be sweet and wipe the seat"

Poetry(good and bad) is everywhere.Let's embrace it as one!

Feel the love!

You know, you really must get some glasses, mal, cause I did say that Shakespeare was probably writing to ingratiate himself with his patrons (he was a member of the Queen's and then the King's Players, after all.) At least partly.

But I don't think that's a major part of a major writer's purpose. If they can be said to have a purpose. You just write about what you're interested in, don't you? It's a waste of time trying to anticipate what the audience (or the readers) think they're going to like. I've seen some poets perform the same poems again and again, because, hey, they worked last time, maybe they'll work again.

I actually think that it probably insults an audience's intelligence to do something "easy" for them. To offer cliches and bad puns is to offer them nothing in the end. To offer simple shock tactics might work once; but not again with the same audience. When I read poetry or hear it, I want to be surprised; taken somewhere I've never been before. John Ashbery said, "What's the point in telling people something they already know?"

There's also the question of why something is poetry in the first place. If you could as easily put it into a letter to the newspaper, why write it into a poem? If you could put in on a postcard, why make it a poem? Or if it's comedy, why not just do the joke? It's because we like the difficulty of poetry, its resistance to easy meanings and cliche, isn't it? It's because we love the sound of language stretched to its limit, or condensed into a small space rather than rabbiting on and on like prose does, isn't it? It's not because it tells us "Drugs are bad," "I had a nice time in Florence last year" or "life is first boredom, then fear", is it?

"The medium is the message," folks.