Rather badly recorded somewhat embarrassing video of Ros

[Ros]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtV06bHwODI

2.3 minutes in. At your own risk; no refunds given.

Ros

[David]

Very good! Never done this sort of thing. Must be nerve-wracking.

[Antcliff]

Great, Ros. Not embarrassing at all, surely!

Seth

[Nash]

It's a good reading, Ros. Calm and confident, good eye contact with the audience. Yep, nothing to be embarrassed about there.

[Ros]

Y'all are too kind. Thanks, chaps. I'm not convinced I write the sort of poems that work very well at readings - people tend to look a bit stunned.

Ros

[k-j]

Ros, I love your Curiosity poem! I didn't see it here, did you post it?

Good performance. I don't remember any of the three from PG but I have a feeling I enjoyed them more performed than I would have on the screen.

[Ros]

Thanks, k-j, glad you could hear it above the background noise! That was coming from the floor below - the people at the event were actually listening, I believe. I don't think Curiosity has been on PG - I'll put it in Finishing Touch, if you're interested.

Ros

[k-j]

I'll put it in Finishing Touch, if you're interested.

Yes please

[Ros]

I'll put it in Finishing Touch, if you're interested.

Yes please

ok, have done.

Ros

[Suzanne]

Excellent Ros! That is inspiring! Really enjoyable poems. Liked the second one best. Thank you for posting this, i am feeling the urge to YouTube my own....

Congrats on winning.
Suzanne

[Oskar]

There’s nothing to be embarrassed about here, as far as I can see. I enjoyed your readings, Ros. You deserve respect for standing up in front of your peers and delivering such authoritative renderings of your poetry. Thank you.

[Macavity]

hi Ros,
I thought your reading of the first poem was the best in terms of pace and clarity. Then listening and also reading your posting of 'Curiosity' proved to be as enjoyable. When I go to readings I tend to listen out for or my ear picks up on phrasing, sounds, occasionally imagery, rather than seeking meaning (unless I have read the poems prior to the reading and combine that with the performance)...'a clock flicks numbers' and 'hours unfolded into envelopes' being examples in your first poem that my 'ear' picked up.
I went to a reading last year to hear Jackie Kay and Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch. The former was performance, all show, entertaining lewd remarks, incomprehensible Scottish dialect poems; the latter was nervous, stumbled on her words, but the feeling was of something more interesting being said (her topic was expeditions to the South Pole by Scott). The Antiphon blog on Poetry in Performance sums it for me:

The more performative we allow our work to be, taking the audience into account, then the more we are likely to choose humour, to find subjects which are either titillating (sex and violence generally get more attention than text and violets), to look for ways of presenting our work which make it more ordinary, more human as we read, which may move us away from the endstop, the caesura, the rhythms and breaths built in to the work.

http://antiphonblog.wordpress.com/

cheers

mac

[Ros]

Suzanne, Oskar, thanks. I think I still tend to read too quickly, but I'm getting better.

Mac, thanks - yes, that's a post by Noel. Poetry can be a difficult thing to read - if the poet's trying to get across quite difficult concepts, or uses convoluted language, I'm not sure you can do much more than pick up on particular phrases and sounds. Plus at general readings there's the issue of how much else to say - I've been to readings where the 'why I wrote this' bit was more interesting than the poem.

ros