AustLit

'During a panel at the 2010 Salt on the Tongue poetry festival in Goolwa, SA, one audience member slammed performance poetry as being ‘more about the poet than the poetry’. Their intention was to damn performance poetry as an inferior genre – the undereducated, overcelebrated, buck-toothed cousin of real literature. Inadvertently, though, the comment hit upon a much bigger issue than that same tired line in the sand. As a sometimes performance poet sitting just a few rows back, I was not so much insulted as amused by the attack. Yes, I thought to myself, there’s a grain of truth in that – perhaps not more, but often as much – but how is page poetry any different?'