Publikacija SEP 2011 - Vilenica

scenes all over the world (such as the notorious Croatian festival FAK
and Prozni mnogoboji – The Prose Marathon – in Slovenia, if we limit
ourselves only to the more local environment). The present text will
focus on poetry performances and their value.
As already said, a poetry recital or, better yet, the performance of a
poem can already be part of poetry itself. More than that, it is its fundamental
part, connected to its very beginnings in the history of mankind,
from the Indian The Vedas to classic poetry. After all, poetry, in the form
we know today and of which we are heirs, was first transmitted orally. It
was, if we use the popular contemporary word, performative in its basis.
This postmodern term derives from the label for poetry, which is written
to be performed. Performance poetry tends to draw on oral tradition
and had developed and flourished in the 1980’s, primarily in the US.
This poetry movement, which builds on vehement, often pompous poetic
expression, also encompasses, in its wider sense, slam, sound poetry,
spoken word etc.
This text will not be focusing on performance poetry but rather on
poetry which is not written with live performance in mind – or reciting
or reading. To sum up, I will attempt to illustrate how, in the
so-called standard, traditional poetry, which certainly must be of high
quality, foundations can be laid for good performance. These foundations
consist of the poetic language, the poem’s rhythm, rhyme etc.
These can truly be achieved only through the human voice, the voice
performing the poetry. Personally, I believe it is better that this is the
voice of the author. (There is a poetry portal, www.lyrikline.org, which
shares my opinion.) And why is the author’s voice such a key element
in performing poetry I am certain that only the voice can reveal the
act of language in the poem, only the voice can provide a true experience
of the language. And, as Martin Heidegger would put it, only the
voice can unfold the complete essence of the poem.
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