by Chris Banks

No. The answer is always no. You know the answer is no. You know what you know, right? Your brain is saying, “don’t do it…” as you scan the tiny poetry crowd seated at candle-lit tables at the dive bar off of College Street in Toronto, Ontario, but there is a certain type of poet—half Insta-poet, half preschooler —that cannot help themselves.

They simply have to ask this question after successfully anaesthetising a crowd with three hundred dreadful poems they have already read in generic, auto-tune “Poetry Voice”:

Should I read just one or two more?

Look, most Open Mic poetry readings are terrible. This is because MOST Open Mic poetry is terrible. It takes a lot of effort and editing and practice to make poetry NOT TERRIBLE.

I remember meeting one of my Canadian poetry heroes John Newlove at a poetry reading when I was twenty-one, and he seemed equally charmed and embarrassed by my “gushing” on and on about his work. I remember him smiling, thanking me, but also the look of panic on his face like all the air was leaving the room.

There is the poetry, and then there is the performance. I always choose poetry.

If you want to be a performer become a rapper, or an actor, or even a TeleTubby. You too can be the new Tinky Winky. If your goal is to reach as wide an audience as possible, do what writer Kathy Acker told a young Kathleen Hanna: form a punk rock band.

But young poets, and this is important, if you really want to be a practising poet, with accolades (haha!) and published books, readings should be brief, and they should not be treated as more important than the poems themselves.

How do I know? Because I was once you. I was once young, talented, and inexperienced.

I too haunted Open Mic nights in downtown Guelph, and Fine Art Bashes on campus when I should have stayed home, and just read more widely. I should point out that there are certainly good things about reading poetry publicly as a young person, things like community, friendship, and much needed “ego stroking” when most times in your studio apartment, or residence room, you feel like you are failing, because really you are. 

You fail, you fail, until you don’t anymore.

But applause can become addictive. I have seen many, many young poets, many more talented than I, trade their talents for “a career” of performing to large crowds in small bars. Your ambition should be larger than that. 

I largely avoid poetry readings unless it is a friend’s book launch, or some monumental International poet comes to Canada to give a reading at the Harbourfront Festival of Authors. I saw Mark Strand read there once. He slowly shuffled out onto the stage, and did not really interact with the audience at all. He read his beautiful poems in an even, unembellished voice for twenty minutes. There were no stories, or anecdotes between poems, and when he was finished, he politely said “thank you”.

It was the best poetry reading I have ever seen. I was elated. In awe, really.

Now the worst poetry reading I have ever seen is impossible to narrow down because I have seen too many. I have seen a McGill tenured professor dressed in a loincloth, body painted head to toe in white, flanked by a young man and a topless young woman, all dressed and body-painted the same way as him, screaming “Yawp!” at a Montreal loft party where a young Rufus Wainwright played. I have seen a sound poet “birth” a poem on-stage complete with a supporting doula. Then there was the man who read the poem about 911 dressed as a fire-fighter. And so on.

Working with props seems to be key to giving a truly bad poetry performance. Every five years, some new poet discovers “the gimmick” of bringing an old-timey typewriter on stage. They invite the audience to shout subjects so they can bang out immediate, “automatic” poems using the ‘clack-clack’ of an Olivetti Lettera 32.

Echo effect pedals, purposeless screaming, elaborate costumes— I have seen it all.

If we truly cared about poetry performance—and I mean really, really cared—there might be violent consequences for giving a bad poetry reading in the way the Philippines has been plagued by a series of karaoke My Way killings. Some terrible karaoke singers there have lost their lives for singing Frank Sinatra’s signature song off-key.

Fortunately for the poetry community, no one really cares about poetry readings. They care about poetry, but not poetry readings.

It’s true I loved Open Mic nights when I was young. I would drink two beers, muster up the courage to read my two little imagistic poems, and then quickly sit down. Sometimes people would come up to me and say they liked my poem. I might puff out my chest, and say, ”I liked your poem too!” By the end of the night I might have garnered enough societal acceptance to try to write a few more poems the following month until the next Open Mic reading. 

That is the good stuff of Open Mics.

The bad stuff is the trench coat Bukowskis wearing sunglasses, the comedic “Big Fish” poet from a small campus decked out in a ridiculous poet scarf, the seemingly endless poems about tarot cards. Should I just read one more?

Look, I know this sounds awful to some. They will say I am talking from a place of societal privilege and power, or that I’m becoming an old geezer, or some such thing. But honestly, I’m just trying to let young poets know reading well has no bearing on how strong your poetry is, or will be. For instance, I think Louise Glück was a terrible reader of her poems. Kim Addonizio is terrific! Both are great poets.

Honestly, poetry performance should be thought of as the front porch. Your poetry is the old Victorian house with secret passages and haunted rooms.

I believed performing poetry was really important in my Twenties, and that set me back at least ten years in my poetic development. It really did.

And let me be clear: I have no qualms with the Spoken Word community. It’s an art-form I do not much enjoy, but several poets I respect have come out of that community and went on to publish books. I’m thinking of poets like the terrific Danez Smith, or Amanda Gorman who has done more to grow the poetry reading audience in America than any other living poet. I respect that.

However, I don’t care much for Insta-poets, or those who want to build their poetry “brand”. Poetry is not a brand or a trademark. It is a chosen vocation. Poor Narcissus saw his reflection in a pool of water, and stared at it his whole life. For better or for worse, we have social media profiles and poetry readings that equally can ruin young, solipsistic poets obsessed with ‘likes’.

Reading poems aloud usually highlights their immediate flaws which is again why I don’t much like amateur poetry readings. I can hear the flaws, and so can the rest of the audience.

A poem should be written, and rewritten, until there is no more access to it, until the seams are no longer showing, or if there are cracks in the poem, the cracks are filled in with gold like Kintsugi, a Japanese art-form where pottery is repaired with gold in order to highlight its wabi-sabi, or imperfections. If that is why you wish to read your poems to an audience—in order to hear their imperfections—then I’m all for it.

Sometimes, a young poet surprises you at an Open Mic night.

I’m thinking of a young Souvankham Thammavongsa, twenty years ago, who used to read at the Artbar reading series open set in Toronto. This was as much to announce to potential publishers that she had arrived on the scene as it was to hear what was wrong, if anything, with her poems. I always smiled when I saw Thammavongsa read her inimitable poems at the Victory Café in Mirvish village in Toronto because I knew she was going to make it a special night.

  But unfortunately, most poets who read at Open Mics have little interest in wanting to be better poets. This takes years of writing, rewriting, and reading other more experienced poets. It takes failure, and lots of it. This path does not offer the immediate dopamine Big Gulp of an Open Mic performance. Most Open Mic poets only wish to be heard. They want to stand under the stage lights at the bar, listen to the slow IV drip of audience applause after each poem, and ask the foolish question: Should I read one more?