Tips for Not Performing Poems

Well I’m not just a one trick pony, I can advise on how not to read your poems too

Here goes:

1. Sound Bored. Read the poem as if it’s a technical manual from a microwave that no one ever reads. In fact read out a technical manual from a microwave if you can find one.
2. Don’t let em know when it’s over. Have lots of awkward pauses within your poems. Say the third last line as if it’s the last. Pause, when they start clapping read the second last (or penultamite ooh aren’t I posh? – see point 3) line, repeat as necessary.
3. Use the longest words you can find, in the introduction or better yet in the poem itself, trawl the dictionary for long long words to make the audience feel like ignoramice (plural for ignoramouses – see point 4)
4. Be patronising – explain everything to the crowd. They know nothing. They need to be spoon fed, make all your intros at least five times longer than the poems themselves.
5. Volume Control. Shout – as loud as you can. Whisper – make them all think they’re going deaf. Keep turning it up and down throughout your bit.
6. If you make a mistake, go back to the start. Read the poem as many times as you need to in order to get it absolutely perfect. Treat the audience like a patient camera crew. Say “No, I wasn’t fully happy with that, I’ll do it again”
7. Take at least twice your allocated time. See point 4 & 6 for methods to achieve this – it will make you stand out in the audience’s memory. Oh yeah.
8. React. Cheer loudly at the end of each of your own poems. Boo any other poets. Laugh condescendingly at the serious bits in their poems. Repeat their lines loudly and incredulously where necessary.
9. Dress as uncomfortably as you can. Root through the drawers for that body suit from the early nineties, buy a leotard if you’re a man.
10. Get roaring drunk before you go on. Nothing says tortured artist like a real live slobbering gibbering mess.

Simple really – let me know how it goes. Actually let me know when you’re reading. I'll be there.