What do you do in features besides read slam poems?

[sirenoftitan1]

I am dissecting the anatomy of a good feature, because I think a twenty-minute set should be more than just five or six slam poems.

Some things I've used or seen others use:

Cover poems
Short poems
Some type of intermission (Limericks, haiku, beatboxing, etc.)
First drafts

What else, LJ kids?

Comments

[javabill]

radioactiveart instilled in me the idea of structuring a feature around a theme. it does not need to be a solid theme, but a connecting thread between the pieces. i also tend to chatter between poems. my work can get a bit dark, so some silly banter tends to make the evening go a bit smoother.

i try to always do a cover.
many people paved the way for what i do & i try to honor them by covering a poet who has influenced me or a poem by someone who others may not know about (yet).

every now & then i'll do just one long piece.
(i have 5 poems/stories that run 20 min or longer)
i don't do it too often because you need the right room for it & i don't want it to be a common thing for me.

a connection with the audience is most important.
it is the reason for being there... to entertain the audience. poetry is a conversation & what happens on stage is only half of that conversation. a feature needs to listen to the audience & adjust as needed to give them the best show possible.

[radioactiveart]

Oh, and of course, there's always the Rip Up Reading...which I've done all of twice in ten years.

[sirenoftitan1]

Yeah, I was also talking about this yesterday with Emily. I love the idea...I'd love to try it for a local crowd. We were talking about making our off-season slams first draft slams, but I wonder if I could talk anyone into a rip-up slam.

[twosnoos]

Ooh, can we talk about things features should NEVER do as well

[sirenoftitan1]

Ha, and I just said that I am always the "how am I doing on time?" person. The problem, for me, is that no matter how many times I do my set beforehand and time it, I always get on stage, do my poems, and think that only three minutes have passed, so I am worried about running too short.

[twosnoos]

My trick to counter this is to either:

* Use a watch or a timer on your phone to keep track (which I never actually do, because I own neither a watch nor a phone capable of complex things like "timers");

OR

* Ask one friend in the audience to keep track the time for you. You can then look at that friend during the set and the person can give you a thumbs up sign, or five more minutes sign, or one more poem sign, or whatever. It works, I swears!

[sirenoftitan1]

Well, after my first few features I learned to trust myself, and if I've done all the poems I've planned to do, I get off the stage.

[coffeehousemt]

I like having at least one "unique" thing for each feature. This might be some holiday-themed haikus, a power point presentation, group piece, audience participation, a new chapbook, covers, or a performance specific mini-chapbook. I posted mini poems all over the house during the last kitchen sessions for people to read during the break. One of my favorite things I've actually started incorporating in more (and by "more" I mean "have done it twice now") is a bit with postcards where I leave different postcards places and have the audience find them and read them out loud. It's been pretty successful.

For me, that's the part of performing/slam that is exciting to me: using the feature opportunity to experiment and push the boundaries of traditional features and spoken word in general.

I am confused by the "slam/nonslam/page" poem discussion happening. Do your "slam" poems not have literary merit? Do you not perform the shit out of your"page" poems?

[sirenoftitan1]

Ah, no, all I meant in the original post was that five 3-minute poems can be very tedious without some of the other elements people are talking about here. I don't design a set by taking my five best-scoring poems and perform them.

[anomalemily]

since I was part of that, I will chime in also...

A. I, in part, meant 3ish min poems. I do not have a problem with brevity. A lot of the poems that I write are 2min and under.

B. Also, there are a LOT of poems that I write that do terribly in slams, but do very well at features in the context of a larger set. Slam poems, to me, stand alone.