Well, last Tuesday I was only able to make it for the last few performances of Kearney’s poetry so unfortunately I did not get to see Tisa Bryant read any of her works but thankfully she did do a little bit of reading on that Wednesday. Based on those moments, I found performance poetry intriguing and saw the difference between Kearney’s written poems and how they are actually supposed to be read. Even though his poems have arrows and brackets meant to guide I don’t think I would’ve been able to follow it in the way that they were meant to be read. I’m amazed that he can even perform them that fluently with how they are arranged on page, though I guess he’s done it so often that I doubt he even reads it when he sees it on the page and it’s just purely through memorization.
I also found the topic of Oral Texuality and the tension between the oral and textual sides of literature. Connecting it back to Africa and the oral traditions the native people used in the past and still use today was also interesting and the fact that Africa as a nation (the tribal nation) values oral over literature. While, at the same time, the western world values literature over spoken words. This duality creates tension and from the tension new things, new technique are born. I hadn’t really thought of performance poetry as being transgenre, though now that I think on it, it is so obviously clear that it is.
There is so much opportunity within this sphere for growth and production, but I feel like it is also a difficult line of concentration. How can you make the words on the page become synonymous with the feeling in which you spoke them? Kearney had tried (maybe succeeded?) with his Black Automaton and although it is indeed visually rich, does it really communicate the enthusiasm with which he performs? I can’t be so sure, actually I’m quite doubtful that it can ever be done. This makes me want to explore this new form (not personally, I’m horrible at performing things, especially my own work) and think that maybe it will gain in popularity and spread to new genres. And although I just said new form, isn’t theatre the same thing or is it different? Maybe not, because while actors act out characters, poets act out words.
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