Poetry Forum

Report From Open Mic Poetry Night

The first
Suffers from
Poetry Voice.
Peers out,
Chin tucked to chest.
Intones,
Meaningful and glum,
Low and lu
Gu
Bri
Ous,
With pauses

On the important
Words.


Number two
Is furious with
Her mother.
But thinks it wouldn’t
Be poetic
To say so in so
Many words.


Three
Jumps!
Excited and hairy,
Onstage. Leans back,
Head up, arms out
To proclaim,
“My Testicles!”
To the meagre
Handful below.


The last brings to mind
A busybody
Do-gooder,
Eager to pull
The presumed blind
From one corner
To the other,
Who then takes off
Too fast to hear
The voice behind
Protest,
“Why the fuck
Was I dragged here?”

I enjoyed reading this - some good rhymes/half rhymes. I thought the opening verse particularly good - I've never been a fan of 'concrete' poetry, but lugubrious is put to good use.

Nothing to pick at really - I'd leave out the -

'On important
Words - - just for the flows sake.

Is there any reason for upper case beginnings of each line? That's my main dislike - when I see a capital letter, I tend to go back to see if I've missed a full-stop so the first read is full of fits and starts.

Good one

Barrie

PS. I've only ever been to one open mike do - You've reminded me why.

Ha ha. Love "excited and hairy". You've really nailed some open-mic archetypes. Lose those initial caps. Will you be performing this at a venue near me soon?

Very entertaining - I felt like I was there, although I've never been to a pooetry reading!

I like you'r use of important words and so many words especially.

Come to think of it your poem brings to mind a stand-up comedian lampooning stand up poets...

Geoff

chuckle, the way its written expresses their charachters perfectly. I agree, when can we see this performed?

benjy

Top marks for this.

Just a quick thign about capitalisation. Some poems benefit from capitalisation, others don't. I think this does not benefit from it. Firstly, capitalising for the sake of capitalising strikes me as the 'Poetry Voice' itself. Secondly, I think Poetry Voice would benefit from an obvious capitalisation. If it is surrounded by others then it doesn't have the same impact. I think, for this poem, a change to de-capitalised lines would make for a much better read.

Dave

I can only echo others in how much I enjoyed this. You captured the feeling well. The only suggestion I have is to maybe mimick the different styles more in the corresponding stanzas? That exaggerates the annoying characteristics even more. But then again, the thing to avoid would be to make the poem itself too annoying. But then again again, maybe it is better to not fix what isn't broken.

- Caleb

This is great. I say that, never having been to an open mic evening in my life, but this is really funny, and meagre handful is brilliant, and Lu Gu Bri Ous is excellent. (Having spaced it like that, do you need to say With pauses? Maybe you do.)

Good stuff.

I'm rushing out but wanted to say I thought this was great. It made me laugh too. Hopefully I'll get some more time later to come back for another read and a longer comment.