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5 Tips for Poetry Performance.
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5 Tips for Poetry Performance.
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<span style="color:#ff0000">Introduction</span>: Hi, I'm <a href="#" onmouseover="ddrivetip('&lt;img src=renee.png /&gt;','','250')"onmouseout="hideddrivetip()">Renée LaTulippe</a> from nowaterriver.com. I'm very pleased to be contributing to the first annual doing life write teleconference with my talk "I'm doing poetry right'.
Poetry is a wonderful art form meant1 to be read and performed out loud but too often it's put on a pedestal and strikes1 fear into the hearts of men. Well I'm here to tell you that poetry is for everyone and everyone can have fun performing1 it. This video is for students, teachers and poetry lovers everywhere who want to get out of the chair, raise1 their voices and do poetry right. And here are 5 tips to help you do just that.</div><div class="virtualpage">
<span style="color:#ff0000">Tip number 1</span>
Score your poem. Once you've chosen which poem you'd like to do, spend some time with the text, scoring your script. That simply means going through and highlighting1 the words you might want to emphasize1, <abbr title="griffoner, noter">jotting down</abbr> ideas for movement and marking where you might want to speed up, slow down or pause for effect. I sometimes use musical notation for this like crescendo and staccato, but you can use whatever system works best for you. Make choices that are natural for the poem. If you're doing a dramatic1 poem like Jabberwocky or The Raven, you can have a lot more fun exaggerating the movement and voice. If you're doing a simpler more realistic poem, you're going to want to keep your choices natural and realistic as well. Once you're finished scoring your poem, your script is going to look like a <abbr title="grand bazar">big ol mess</abbr>, like mine for Jabberwocky and that's fine because it looks like a big ol mess means you've just created a roadmap1 for your performance and you're ready to rehearse1.</div><div class="virtualpage">
<span style="color:#ff0000">Tip number 2</span>
Find your pace1. Often when people get in front of an audience or a camera, the adrenaline <abbr title="faire effet">kicks in</abbr> and they start talking a mile a minute. Remember that a poem is a little story and you want to be sure that your audience1 understands the beginning the middle and the end. Slowing down will <abbr title="assurer">ensure</abbr> that that happens. One thing to <a href="#" onmouseover="ddrivetip('faire attention à')"onmouseout="hideddrivetip()">look out</a> for here is how you <abbr title="gérer">handle</abbr> line breaks. Of course poems are written in lines but that doesn't mean you have to pause at the end of every single one. Doing so would result in a very <abbr title="agité">choppy</abbr> unnatural reading. So save your pauses for where you see the punctuation. Often the poem itself will dictate the <abbr title="allure">pacing</abbr>. For example look at this clip from the <i>Lake Isle of Industry by WB Yeats</i>.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
this poem has a languid yearning feeling behind it which calls for slower more luxurious reading. Finding your pace is also where scoring your poem comes in handy, you've already marked where you might want to speed up slow down or pause for effect so now it's just a matter of following the roadmap you've already created.</div><div class="virtualpage">
<span style="color:#ff0000">Tip number 3<span>
Use good diction. Good diction simply means clear pronunciation of the words, and it is essential for doing poetry right. A poem has limited words in the first place so every single one of them is important. You've no doubt heard the phrase '<abbr title="to pay a great deal of attention to the details of something, especially when you are trying to complete a task">Cross your T's and dot your i's</abbr>', Well diction1 is the verbal embodiment1 of that saying. Nervous speakers tend to1 <abbr title="mélanger, baragouiner">garble</abbr> their words or <abb title="avaler">swallow</abbr> the ends of their sentences which makes it very difficult for an audience to follow them and understand what they're saying. Take a look at this <abbr title="échnatillon">sample</abbr> from Jabberwocky and notice how I exaggerated the diction for effect.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
In that clip you could hear every K, S and D at the ends of the words. Cearly you don't need to go quite so far when you're doing a realistic poem like the lake Isle of Ennisfree, but when in doubt1 err on the side of exaggeration.</div><div class="virtualpage">
<span style="color:#ff0000">Tip number 4</span>
Use natural movement. Movement is probably the area that people have the most trouble with, and inexperienced speakers1 either do nothing at all, standing very <abbr title="raide">stiff</abbr> and unnatural1, or they do too much acting1 out every word as in 'I searched the horizon for a ship and low I saw it bouncing across the waves'. Now you probably wouldn't speak that way in a regular conversation1 so there's no need to do so in a poem either. The secret is to keep it simple and keep it natural, let the poem inform your movement. Some poems like Jabberwocky <abbr title="se prêtent à">lend themselves to</abbr> more dramatic movement whereas other poems like the Lake Isle of Innisfree <abbr title="demandent, nécessitent">require</abbr> no movement at all. <abbr title="cependant">Still</abbr> others are somewhere in the middle like this children's poem:
But ef my papa goes into the house,
En mamma, she goes in, too,
I just keep still, like a little mouse,
For the moo-cow-moo might moo!
The moo-cow-moo's got a tail like a rope
En it's raveled down where it grows,
En it's just like feeling a piece of soap
All over the moo-cow's nose.
If you still really have absolutely no idea what to do with your hands, the <abbr title="a broadly accurate guide or principle, based on practice rather than theory.">rule of thumb</abbr> is this: keep your arms <abbr title="courbé">bent</abbr>, elbows relaxed and <abbr title="lâches">loose</abbr> at your sides, hands gently linked. From this position, you're ready to make natural gestures1 whenever you need them.</div><div class="virtualpage">
<span style="color:#ff0000">Tip number 5</span>
Be natural and have fun. Yes, there's that word 'natural' again but it's really is the <abbr title="pierre angulaire">cornerstone</abbr> of performing poetry1. Once you have all these elements together, have fun1 practicing your poem until it becomes second nature1 and just <abbr title="s'écouler">flows out</abbr> naturally. Remember too to have fun with the language because language and sound are what poetry is all about.
And there you have it with a little bit of practice you'll soon be <abbr title="faire honneur à">doing your poem justice</abbr> and doing poetry right. Thank you for joining me and if you'd like to see more examples of poetry readings and performance, please visit me at my poetry video blognowaterriver.com. Bye bye </div>
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